Sleepy
by capt. h
Summary: At night Ruby dreams of the endless sands of Hueco Mundo. Or is it the arrancar dreaming of being a huntress? Either way, Hueco Mundo will challenge Ruby's innocence as her life in Remnant collides with her dreams of sand.
1. Chapter 1

The girl opened her eyes and stretched like a dog. Which was appropriate considering how much she looked like a werewolf made out of bones.

"I didn't think you would wake up." The man was tall, with scruffy long hair.

The girl sprung awake at that. "Starrk!" she said, tackling the man into a hug.

"Hey don't forget about me!" a second, short girl with a bony helmet said.

"Lilynette!" the girl said, adding the new girl to the hug. "I didn't expect to see you guys again!"

"Make that both of us," Starrk replied. "You realize you fell asleep for... I don't know how long, it had to have been something like 3 years."

"But that can't be right," said the girl, tilting her head, "It's only been... I don't remember how long it's been, but it hasn't been 3 years!"

"Do you remember anything?" Lilynette huffed. "Or do you still not remember your name."

"Oh no, I remember now! It's," the girl paused. She was sure she knew it, it was on the tip of her tongue... aha! "Xiao Long! Like my older sister! It's... Ruby Xiao Long!" though even as the words left her mouth, she felt confused by them. Why would her last name feel wrong...? Ah well, it's not all that important anyway.

"You have a sister?" Lilynette replied back. "What's she like?"

"Oh she's great, she..." Ruby had to pause. What was her sister like? It's so hard to remember here, like all the memories are fuzzy. "She's two years older than me! And she's learning how to fight monsters!"

Starrk gave Ruby a calculating look. "You know, I'm surprised to see you again. Most hollows simply die in my presence. The stronger ones will last an hour before my reiatsu kills them. But you just, didn't. How did you do that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Ruby said sheepishly. "I don't even know what hollows and reiatsu is."

"Idiot," Lilynette muttered. "How can you be here and not know that?"

"I don't know." Ruby said. "I just wake up here sometimes, I don't know how things work."

"Hollows are ghosts!" Lilynette replied. "Souls of the dead bent on consuming the living to survive!"

"Oh, that sounds scary," Ruby said, leaning her back against a rock as she struggled to keep her eyes open. "Could you do me a favor and wake me up if you see one?"

"Oh no, you're not going back to sleep that easily!" Lilynette shouted, shaking Ruby back and forth. "We waited 3 years for you to wake up, 3 years! You're not falling asleep on us again!"

But the words were lost on Ruby as she softly snored her response. Lilynette dropped the girl's body to the ground, crossing her arms. "Well, this was a huge waste of time."

"I'm keeping her," Starrk replies simply, lifting Ruby onto her back.

"What? Why?"

With a bored glaze in Lilynette's direction, Starrk replied, "No one else lives long enough to talk to."

"Well, you're carrying her then," Lilynette huffed back.

With a light chuckle, Starrk simply says, "I suppose I am."

vvvvvv

With Captain Tosen to his left and Captain Tsubokura to his right, Aizen was optimistic about his latest aquisition. A Hollow so powerful that it's spiritual pressure alone would kill any who ventured into his desert. Not even Aizen was immune to the raw power sparking through the air as he approached the... trio? No, duo, the girl and the man have the same reiatsu. Interesting.

"Excuse me!" The werewolf of the 3 shouted their way with the voice of a teenage girl. That voice did not go with that body, although the fact that she was even alive so close to the target arrancar merited her some consideration. Pretty fast too, Aizen wasn't sure even he could keep up with this... hollow? No, around the eyes the mask is chipped off, arrancar. "It's great to see someone out here, but you should turn back before Starrk's reiatsu kills you. He can't hold it back very well."

"Ah, but that's why I'm here," Aizen responded. "As both a scholar and a shinigami captain, I believe my organization could be exactly what you need."

"Can your organization stop my spiritual pressure from leaking out," Starrk asked blandly.

"Of course," Aizen replied, appraising the 3. He had no idea if Octava could but solving these kinds of problems and developing his next generation of arrancar was the man's job, and Aizen expected that he would deliver. Aizen used the pause he created to quickly assess the situation, why would this hollow split his soul in two and want to lessen his spiritual power? And with that, the answer became obvious to the man, as he said, "I would not be here if I could not fix your problem. You will never have to be lonely again."

"Do you really believe these people," Lilynette asked, "They'd hardly be the first to claim they could handle you."

"Hey, we found Ruby," Starrk replied back.

"And she still spends 23 hours a day asleep!"

Holding Lilynette down with a pat on the shoulder, Starrk replied, "Me any Lilynette here would be glad to take you up on your offer. What about you Ruby?"

"Definitely! I always wanted to see some of these other arrancar you keep mentioning!"

Aizen chuckled, "I shouldn't be surprised to see you've made a friend out here. Someone had to be able to survive you after all these years."

"Don't you mean two friends? Me and Lilynette?" Ruby asked.

Aizen gave the three of them a calculating look, quickly analyzing the dynamics. So he hasn't told this wolf arrancar that he and Lilynette are the same? Well, spoiling Starrk's fun wouldn't help his recruitment whatsoever, so Aizen simply said, "Excuse me, I misspoke." Let Starrk explain himself to the girl on his own terms.

He was never going to get used to hearing a teenage girl's voice coming out of a 6 foot tall skeletal werewolf.

vvvvvv

Alright, all the Beowulves were dead. It could have gone better, Weiss admitted, but at least her and her new... partner are both alive. She turns to face her partner and "Oh my god what are you doing!"

"Eating," Ruby shrugged, the black and red guts of the Grimm dribbling down her face, making Weiss nausious.

"What? Why?" Weiss demanded. "Why would you eat them?"

"Because they taste good. You should try some," Ruby answered back.

"Ew, no, put that down right now!" Weiss demanded.

"Sorry Weiss, but I need to keep up my strength. I haven't eaten in a few days."

"What, but, how?" Weiss sputtered.

"I mean hollow. There hasn't been much hollow to go around. Gotta make do with what you got."

Weiss raised her hand to speak, but then paused, took a deep breath, and decided to try again. "So you're saying... you have to eat 'hollows'... or else you get hungry for Grimm? What does that even mean?"

"Right, you wouldn't know, Hollows are the angry ghosts of dead people. Don't worry, they don't appear on Remnant."

"Nothing you're saying is making any sense!" Weiss shouted. Throwing up her arms, she added, "Look, I'm just going to go over there and look at that tree. And cover my ears. And pretend the sounds are not you eating raw Grimm. Just, do your thing, quickly, ok?"

"Alright Weiss, I'll be done in a minute!" Ruby said.

Weiss pointedly stared at that tree with her ears covered and most certainly did not hear the crushing bones and tearing meat of quickly dissolving Grimm behind her. That is definitely not what that sound was. And when Ruby came back 5 minutes later without so much as a whiff of Grimm on her cloak, the offending viscera having completely dissolved, Weiss glared.

"It's really not a big deal, now come on, those relics won't find themselves!" Ruby said, rushing ahead deeper into the forest.

Weiss really wished she went with Jaune instead.

vvvvvv

As the newly minted team RWBY left their dorm room to head to dinner, Weiss held Yang back, telling the others, "We'll catch up with you in a minute."

"Are you sure?" Ruby asked. "If it's something important, I'm sure we can work through it as a team."

"No, no, it's not that, this is just between me and Yang." Weiss replied.

Ruby stared at Weiss for a moment, before slowly nodding in comprehension. "Alright, but before you get your hopes up my sister is straight," Ruby says, bursting in a fit of her semblance.

Well, that made it awkward. Yang was laughing like a madwoman as Weiss found herself sputtering for a response. Blake was hardly immune herself, getting red as a tomato before chasing after Ruby.

"So ice queen, you heard my sister-" Yang began, before Weiss interrupted her.

"No!" Weiss huffed indignantly. Time to take control of this conversation before Yang turned this into a festival of innuendo. "No, it's about your sister's dietary habits."

"Hm? You don't think she's eating right?" Yang asked.

"I saw her eating the Grimm we killed."

Yang gave Weiss a questioning look. She was Ruby's sister, shouldn't she know how to deal with this?

Yang replied back, "Is that... a joke? I don't really get it."

"No! No, I mean we killed some beowulves, and then before the corpses dissolved she started stuffing them in her mouth, saying she hadn't eaten these hollow 'things' in a few days! It was scary and disgusting and I want to know what that was about!"

Yang's expression slowly turned to a glare as she responded, "My sister wouldn't do that. Sure she has some weird dreams but she wouldn't do that."

"Well, she did," Weiss said. This was harder than she was expecting, she was sure Yang would have known all this seeing as she lived with Ruby, but Weiss supposed that was too much to ask for.

"Stop lying! My sister wouldn't eat Grimm!" Yang snapped.

"Why would I lie?" Weiss snapped back. "Why would I make up a story about my partner snapping the bones and nashing the flesh of the Grimm while I waited by the side, pretending I couldn't hear it?"

Yang continued to glare, before slumping into a defeated look. "Ruby... has been having weird dreams. Dreams about these things she calls hollows, vengeful hunter ghosts or something. She has mentioned that she needs to eat their corpses in the dreams. I've known about it since forever, but I was hoping it was just weird dream stuff. Sometimes it bleeds into what she does in reality, but... this is the first time I've heard of her eating Grimm."

"So you had no idea..." Weiss said.

"We haven't been pressing her to talk about the dream stuff," Yang explained, still slumping. "The opposite, if anything. She doesn't really talk about vengeful dream ghosts, and we don't press her on them. Me and dad, we figured it would be better for her to keep quiet about all that stuff, it would help her grow up normally."

"I imagine my father would do the same," Weiss said. Well, her father would make his disapproval very obvious, after which Weiss wouldn't speak a word out of line from what her father believed to be proper for a young lady again, but it was almost the same.

"Don't worry, I'll have a word with Ruby, she won't do that again," Yang said, leading Weiss out of the room. "Now come on, it's been a long day and I'm sure we're both starving."

vvvvvv

With a yawn, Ruby opened her eyes. Huh. This was a nice room, weird she didn't recognize it. Oh, but Starrk and Lilynette are here. "Hi Starrk! Hi Lilynette"

"It's about time you woke up, you were out for a week," Lilynette huffed, kicking Starrk out of his nap.

"Sorry!" Ruby said, "I guess I was really tired." She then gave herself a look-over. "Hey, I'm not a beowulf anymore!"

"Nope," Starrk said. "And I don't have to worry about killing people by getting to close to them."

"That's great! Hi five!" Ruby said, raising her arm. "Does that mean now we'll get to meet new people soon?"

Starrk slowly held his own arm up, letting Ruby slap his hand. Just another weird thing about his friend, none of the other arrancar he met so far did it, so he wondered if it was something unique to Ruby. "Yes, yes it does. Aizen actually recruited me to work with his team. I'm filling the role of Primera Espada on a ten man team."

"That means Starrk's number one," Lilynette bragged. "None of the other arrancar could so much as touch him. Like I'd expect anything less."

"That sounds so cool! Can I join too!"

"You can be one of my fraccions. They're arrancar who are friends and subordinates of each of the ten espada."

"Neat," Ruby said, rushing over to the one mirror in the room in a burst of speed. It was weird, seeing herself here in Hueco Mundo for the first time, and she looked like a girl! A girl wearing the skull of a beowulf, but, she actually looked human now.

"Don't you have any questions or anything?" Lilynette asked. "I mean, waking up in a strange room, losing almost all your hallow traits, who is in our new team... Anything?"

"Not really. I figure if it's important I'll find out eventually."

Lilynette shook her head. "None of this seems strange to you? You have no questions at all, you airheaded narcoleptic?"

"Oh, right, just one thing," Ruby said, rushing from the mirror to face Lilynette. "Do you know where there's some food in this place?"

"That's it?" Lilynette shouted, her irritation completely ignored by Starrk and Ruby "That's the only thing bothering you about any of this?"

"Well, you see, I ended up eating in front of my new partner, and it really disturbed her, so I don't want to do that again."

Lilynette sighed. "Ruby, that was a dream. Again."

"But it tasted so good! And W... W..., the girl I was with felt so real!"

"What did she look like?" Lilynette said. "What did she act like? Was she short? Tall? thin? fat?"

Ruby gave Lilynette a glazed over look as she wandered into her own memories. She remembered the girl was... scary? And explosive. Like, the girl was an explosion? It was all too fuzy for her, but she was sure she had a new partner...

Lilynette looked Ruby, then growled, "Come on, lets get you some grub and meet the others. Better that then go through all your memory nonsense."

Starrk shouted to Lilynette, "Pick me something up too, I'm going back to sleep."

"Get it yourself you lazy piece of crap!" Lily returned, dragging Ruby off.

vvvvvv

The two girls went down some stairs and went through an insanely tall doorway into a hallway the size of a stadium, with 5 doorways on each wall.

"Woah, big," Ruby said.

"Each of these doors belongs to an Espada. We're the last one on the right. At our end is where Aizen lives and where Starrk meets with the Espada, at the other end is the infirmary, the food stocks, barracks for low ranking arrancar and hollows, that kind of thing."

"Wait, hollows, as in evil ghosts?"

"Yeah, Ruby, hollows," Lilynette answered.

"Huh," Ruby said, images of Grimm and hollows served up like a pork roast filling her mind. "I guess we won't have to go out for food then!"

"No, no, the hollows are on our side," Lilynette said. "Well, most of them are. There are a couple in the dungeon they keep around for eating."

"Cool." Ruby said. "But how do they keep the hollows under control? Is it Aizen's semblance?"

"Aparently they just listen when you talk to them," Lilynette shrugged.

"Weird," Ruby added, picturing a beowulf with a monicle and a tophat sipping tea and debating politics with a strong mistalean accent. At least, until Lilynette snapped her out of her daydream with a light slap on the back. Well, backbreaking slap on the back to pretty much anyone else, but it was pretty light for Lilynette.

"You know, they don't have a name for those semblances you keep talking about. A lot of them have superpowers, but they haven't come up with a name for arrancar superpowers?" Lilynette added. She's heard them referred to as hollow abilities, special abilities, superpowers, and a couple weirder ones, although the most common was Resurrección abiliti-hey wait a minute. "Ruby, we forgot your scythe."

"No, no, that's back at Beacon."

"No, not that dream stuff, when Aizen made you look human, he gave you a scythe. You need that. It lets you go back to werewolf again. It lets you be super powerful," Lilynette explained.

"Oh," Ruby shrugged. "Neat."

"Yeah, so don't forget it. None of the arrancar around here go anywhere without their weapon."

"Kind of like Beacon!"

"I don't know what that is," Lilynette said.

"I'll have to take you there someday," Ruby replied.

Repeating herself for the hundredth time, Lilynette grumbled back, "Ruby, that's dream stuff again."

At least Ruby had the decency to look sheepish. "Sorry," the girl said. With a blink of an eye she was gone, and about 2 seconds later, she was standing right where she was before, her scythe on her back. "Are we good now?"

Lilynette could never quite get used to that. She thought it was just Ruby's thing until the Septima arrancar Zommari started bragging about his sonido. She'd have to try it some time, it's supposed to be pretty easy for arrancar. When she wasn't already busy. Lilynette slapped herself across the forehead, then remembered to pretend she was exacerbated at Ruby and not her own distraction. "Yes! Lunch! We're doing that!" Lilynette said, leading Ruby down the stadium-hall.

vvvvvv

"This is it!" Lilynette said. In contrast with the other rooms of Hueco Mundo, this one had chairs and tables. And a couple people too.

"Hey chef, two legs of hollow!" Lilynette shouted.

The guy at the back, he looked mostly human except for the scissor-like hands and the pale, white mask, nodded once, before scurrying through the back door. Meanwhile, Lily dragged two chairs to the sole occupied table. "Ruby, this is Ulquiorra, the cuatro espada," she said, gesturing to the pale one with the small lizard grimm on his plate, "and Yammy, the diez espada," she continued, indicating the giant chomping down on 5 steaks. "Yammy, Ulquiorra, this is Ruby, from before Starrk and I joined up with Aizen."

"So you're the trash Lilynette keeps complaining about. Damn brat won't shut up about you sleeping all the time," Yammy said, earning a growl from Lilynette.

"Yeah," Ruby said, rubbing the back of her head. "It's going to be so fun working together. When do we get to hunt hollows?"

Yammy let out a guffaw, while Ulquiorra calmly replied, "We mostly defend this castle and oppose the soul reapers."

"Huh, I've never heard of soul reapers before," Ruby said.

"Soul reapers-" Ulquiorra and Lilynette both started, before Ulquiorra motioned for Lilynette to continue.

"Soul reapers are bad guys who kill arrancar. They live in soul society, where all the good ghosts go when they die. Aizen and his two fraccions were soul reapers until they rebeled against soul society, and now they lead us against the soul reapers!" Lilynette explained, giving Yammy a dirty look as he let out another chuckle.

"So Aizen's a hero of justice, defending the weak from the tyranny of the soul reapers, and we're his rebel forces. That is so cool!" Ruby said.

Yammy just looked at her for a second, before losing control of himself, slamming cracks into the table as he laughed too hard to breath. Meanwhile, Ulquiorra gave them his look of utter boredom, before simply responding, "I would not call us heroes of justice, although it may be a useful way for you to think about it."

Meanwhile, the chef came back with two cuts of meat that looked like the legs of a particularly sick cow, one for each of the girls. "Enjoy," the chef said, before scurring back to his spot.

There was not much conversation after that.

vvvvvv

As Ruby finished inhaling her leg-of-hollow, Hueco Mundo rumbled.

"That happens a lot, doesn't it," Lillynette said.

"Unfortunately," Ulquiorra replied, "Some of us find themselves unable to temper their base instincts."

"That's just the trash working out which of them is the least worthless," Yammy added. "It's pretty much inevitable when you bring this many hollows together with a leader that believes in letting the lower ranks sort out their own squabbles."

Another rumble shook the room, knocking over a table.

"Well I'm checking it out. See you guys later!" Ruby said, grabbing Lilynette.

"Wait wha-" Lilynette said, before the two popped out of existence.

"20 kan says it's Grimmjow," Yammy said.

Ulquiorra stared right back at Yammy, eyes half-lidded in bordom with a blunt, "I'm not betting when it's obvious."

vvvvvv

"-at?" Lilynette finished as she and Ruby popped into existence outside.

30 feet away, and no where near the safe range for a fight between the two arrancar involved, a panther man was attempting to claw through the 6 scythes of a 6-armed guy, only for his claws to be deflected by 4 of the blades while the other two went to decapitate the man.

Then both men jumped back, switching their battle stances to face Ruby and Lilynette.

"Are you two trying to die?" the panther man asked.

"That was awesome!" Ruby said, turning to 6-arms while unsheathing her scythe, showing off the blade. "Can I see your scythes? I'm a scythe user too! Oh, wait, introductions! I'm Ruby, this is Lilynette and your scythes are really awesome! What's your name? And what's your friend's name?"

Lily then bonked Ruby on the head, saying "Ruby, you can't just interrupt a fight like that."

"Oh, sorry guys, keep going," Ruby replied.

The two men shared a meaningful look, before the scythe guy replied, "Well since you asked, that's Grimmjow. Me, my name is Nnoitra Gilga. Remember that name, because," Nnoitra said, before both men vanished and reappeared in front of the pair "It's the last name you'll ever hear!" Then Grimmjow and Nnoitra struck at the same time, as Ruby grabbed Lilynette and vanished.

"That's really rude," Ruby said from behind the two.

"It's one of those honor and respect things guys are big on here," Lilynette explained. "A lot of the arrancar aren't as chill as Starrk, so disagreements tend to come to blows."

"That's kind of extreme though," Ruby said, "I mean, it looked like they were trying to kill us."

"They were," Lilynette said.

"I am the Sexta arrancar," Grimmjow said. "He is the Quinto arrancar. That means we're the number 5 and 6 soldiers in Aizens army, and that means as far as you're concerned, anything we say, goes."

"Wait, but I thought Aizen only had 10 people in his army to start with... so why are you guys being jerks when half of Aizen's army outranks you?" Ruby asked, to which Lilynette simply slapped herself on the forehead.

"Aizen has ten generals, Ruby, Not ten soldiers."

"Oh, so they each lead an army of like a thousand people, right?" Ruby asked, quickly being forced to dodge a scythe blow.

"No," Lilynette said, jumping backwards to avoid a claw swipe, "Just their fraccions, which they have about 5 of between them."

"Oh," Ruby said, holding Lilynette as she fled the dozens of slashes Nnoitra threw her way. "Well, their still being jerks about it!"

"K, on 3 you send us back to Starrk's room," Lilynette said as her left "eye", or more accurately the eye of her mask, began to glow.

"3, 2," Lilynette said between the mad dodges Ruby was making to avoid being struck by either the enraged berserkers. Then with a burst of light she blasted the ground with a laser wider than she was tall, exploding it into an enormous cloud of dust. "1! Go! Go!" she shouted, tapping Ruby's shoulder.

In an instant they were back with Starrk, Ruby's ears still ringing from the blast.

Starrk peaked his eyes open and asked, "So did you bring me any grub?" to which Lilynette replied with a pillow to Starrk's face.

vvvvvv

Ruby had a hole through her chest.

She only really noticed when she took her shower and water started flowing through it.

"Huh," Ruby said, appraising the hole one last time in the mirror. Went straight through where her heart should be and out the back.

Ruby knew it wasn't normal to have a hole through her chest in Remnant, but, well, half her friends had holes in their chests too. Didn't seem to bother them.

So with a shrug, Ruby dressed for the day and left the bathroom, immediately bumping into Yang.

"Hey, Ruby, before we meet the other girls at breakfast," Yang said, pausing. She was looking sheepish, which meant Ruby did something Yang thought was weird again, and Yang was looking for a polite way to say it.

"What did I do?" Ruby asked with a resigned sigh.

"Weiss told me about the Beowulves. During initiation," Yang said.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure to keep fed, it won't happen again," Ruby replied.

Yang slumped her shoulders, "Don't eat Grimm. I don't care what happens in those dreams of yours or how hungry you get, Grimm can't be good for you. Understand?"

Ruby nodded. She understood well enough, Remnant was really picky about what qualified as food. "Yeah, I understand. Weiss was really freaked out."

Yang smiled a tired smile and with a pat on Ruby's back, said, "She sure was. Come on, let's go get breakfast."

vvvvvv

Professor Port gave Weiss a lot to think about. Sure, she might be more qualified to lead than Ruby, or at least less disturbing than the girl who eats Grimm, but she really wasn't being fair to Ruby. She decided she would at least give the dunce more of a chance then a single class session.

As Weiss walked in on Ruby getting ready for bed she froze.

There was a giant hole in Ruby's chest.

"Oh, hey Weiss, I was thinking about some of the stuff that happened in Port's class, and I'm really sorry for distracting you," Ruby said.

"There is a giant hole in your chest." Weiss said, for lack of a more coherent response than the obvious.

"That thing?" Ruby asked, pointing at the hole. "Yeah, it's new," she added as she put on her pajama shirt. "Anyway, I was thinking, maybe we could become study buddies, you know, so we know how to keep up with each other."

"How are you still standing?" Weiss asked, as Ruby climbed into her bed with a book on making friends and influencing people. "That thing is going straight through your spine!"

From her perch on her bunk, Ruby gave a casual shrug. She then laid down on her belly to read her book.

"We need to see a doctor, now!" Weiss said, turning more pale than usual.

"Nah, it's fine Weiss," Ruby said. "A lot of my friends have holes like this... It's weird, but it never seems to hurt... anybody..."

"Ruby, get up, we're going to the infirmary," Weiss said, shaking Ruby. But the girl was already fast asleep, face down into her book, and wouldn't wake up no matter how Weiss jostled her. "God damn it Ruby," Weiss added, flipping through her scroll, sending out texts to Yang and Blake as she put Beacon's emergency line on speaker.

"Beacon after-hours services, this is the emergency line, what is your emergency?"

"I need a stretcher in room 205!" Weiss shouted to the operator, before remembering her own voice. "I need a stretcher in room 205, I can't wake Ruby Rose and she has a huge hole through her chest."

"Sending someone over, please stay on the line. Is your current scroll the callback number?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine, you can call this number back but please hurry!"

"Right away ma'am. Next question, is the person who attacked your teammate still in the area?"

"What?" Weiss said. "No, there's no attacker!"

"Then I'm going to assume the room is secure. Ma'am, I'm going to need you to find some cloth, like a bedsheet, and try to stop the bleeding."

Weiss stared at her scroll for a second, before adding, "But there's no blood! Just the hole!"

"How did Miss Rose get injured?"

"I don't know!" Weiss said, hyperventilating, as the door slammed open.

"What's wrong with Ruby!" Yang said, charging Ruby's bed.

"Ma'am, I'm having some trouble hearing you," the dispatcher said.

"Look, I need to hang up and explain things to Ruby's sister," Weiss explained.

"Ma'am, it's very important that you stay on the line, I need you to perform first aid on Miss Rose until the stretcher arrives. Now, I need you to confirm that Miss Rose isn't bleeding," the dispatcher replied back, Weiss already turning Ruby over and pulling down the front of Ruby's pajama top to examine the hole, making it visible to Yang. "Lay her on her side, but try not to move her more than necessary when doing so."

Yang stared in shock, before shouting, "Oh my god why is there a hole in Ruby! Weiss, what did you do!"

"I didn't do anything! She was like this when I came in!"

"We got to get her to the infirmary!"

"I know!" Weiss shouted back, gasping for breaths. The two girls were driving each other into panic, which wasn't good for anyone; Weiss knew she had to keep her head even if it did look like their team leader was dead.

The operator interrupted the two girls. "Ma'am, I need you to confirm that Ms. Rose is still breathing."

"Right, breathing!" Yang said, rushing to Ruby's side. "She's still breathing! That's good!"

At that moment two men carrying a stretcher came to the door. "Ladies, which of you is Ms. Rose?"

"She's the one on the bed!" Yang shouted, as Weiss finished her call.

"Excuse us," the first man said, motioning them to the hallway as he examined the girl. "You said that she had a hole in her chest?"

"Yeah, right under her top," Yang added.

The man pulled down on Ruby's top an inch an examined the hole for himself, before calling into the mike, "We have a DOA, alert headmaster Ozpin."

"No, she's alive, she's still breathing!" Yang shouted back.

The medic looked at Yang, then took Ruby's pulse. As he did so though Ruby let out a tiny snore, drawing all the man's attention. "Correction, we have... I don't know what we have, but alert Headmaster Ozpin anyway, and open up a unit for Ms. Rose in intensive care." Quickly transitioning Ruby to the stretcher, the man nodded to the two girls "We're taking Ms. Rose to the infirmary, going to run full diagnostics, try to make some sense of this. The two medics then rushed down the hallway with Ruby as the 4th member of the team rounded the corner.

Cone of ice cream in one hand, she saw the ashen faces of Yang and Weiss, the open door, and the stretcher, before her scroll chirped. With a quick glance, Blake was helpfully informed "RUBY HAS A HOLE IN HER CHEST GET HERE RIGHT NOW!"

None of them knew what to say, so the 3 of them stood there for an awkwardly long time, before Yang grabbed Weiss and Blake by the arms and started dragging them to Beacon's infirmary.

vvvvvv

Ozpin was not looking forward to speaking with Taiyang.

Ruby's father had more than enough tragedy for one life time after his wife's death, telling him his daughter is in a coma with a hole in place of her heart would break his heart.

At least she appeared physically healthy. None of the nerve damage he had expected after hearing parts of her spinal column were missing, plus a healthy pulse with average blood pressure that made no sense to Vale Medical's senior cardiac specialist, let alone the school doctor. If it wasn't for the coma Ruby would be a perfectly healthy 15 year old girl.

He should have made the call hours ago, when he asked Yang if he could be the one to break it to her father. He told himself he was waiting until the man woke up; no sense in waking the man over something neither of them could fix. Ozpin knew he was stalling, that he should just get on with it.

6:47. Ruby's been out for almost 9 hours. 9 hours of Yang watching over Ruby until the blonde passed out. 9 hours of staring at his scroll, reading over page 33 of Beacon's annual budget and not remembering any of it, 5 hours since the other two members of team RWBY had left, partially due to the doctor's insistence and his own polite suggestions. Yang remained in spite of both their assurances, and, not wanting the doctor to become a patient, Ozpin recommended letting the blonde stay.

Ozpin finally put down his coffee, and dialed Taiyang's number. He had the number saved of course, dialing it one digit at a time was just yet another attempt to stall this conversation as long as possible.

The other end of the line let out a huge yawn before replying "Xiao Long residence, Taiyang speaking."

"It's Ozpin." That's all a man like Ozpin really had to say to set the tone he was going for.

"What happened," Taiyang replied back, all traces of sleep gone from his voice.

Ozpin turned his back to the observation glass. Getting emotional wouldn't help, he just had to do this fast. Like ripping off a band-aid. "Your daughter, Ruby. We aren't sure of the details, but she has a hole in her chest and she's in a coma."

The silence at the other end of the line spoke volumes to Ozpin. Then the man replied with a curt, "How." It wasn't a question, it was a demand.

"We don't know," Ozpin replied back.

"Did someone attack her?"

"We don't know."

"Oz, this is my daughter," Taiyang said. "You have to give me something."

"She wasn't stabbed, shot, or hurt with any weapon I have ever seen. If she was attacked, it was with a semblance the likes of which has never before seen in Remnant. It's a cylindrical hole, the inside of which is black and smooth to the touch, that doesn't appear to affect her heart in any way while passing straight through where her heart should be. I'm sending you the pictures," Ozpin said with a couple taps of his scroll.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Ozpin wasn't surprised, it took him a few minutes to get used to the idea while watching it in person. If anyone other than Ozpin sent those files, Taiyang would have probably dismissed them as a mean-spirited joke.

But this was Ozpin.

"Tell me everything," Taiyang demanded.

Ozpin turned back to the observation window, taking a sip of his coffee. "One of her new teammates, Weiss Schnee, saw she had a hole in her when Ruby was getting ready for bed." Ozpin gave Ruby a wave with the hand holding his mug. "Over her teammate's objection she went to bed anyway," Ozpin said, mug to mouth, freezing mid-sip. He took another look at Ruby, who was currently being crushed by sisterly hugs and definitely not in a coma, and noticed that the front of his suit was now covered in lukewarm coffee.

"Oz?" Taiyang asked.

Right, he was still on the phone. "And it appears your daughter just woke up."

"Put her on," Taiyang demanded.

"Of course," Ozpin quickly walked by the window and into Ruby's room proper, then explained as he switched to speaker, "I was just on the phone with your father about your condition, Ruby."

"Yang, too much!" Ruby said, straining against the strength of older sister hugs. When Yang let go she took a few huge breaths of air, before asking, "What condition?"

Yang explained, "Rubes, you were unconscious for hours!"

"I was asleep!"

"None of us could wake you up!"

"Yeah, I can sleep pretty deeply..."

"You have a hole through your chest!"

"Tons of people have those..."

"Ruby!" Yang said. "This is serious! We thought you were dying!"

Ruby looked at her lap, before saying, "Alright, Yang, Dad I know you don't like dream stuff... but... this is all dream stuff for me."

"Dream stuff?" Ozpin asked.

"Dream stuff," Both Taiyang and his daughter, Yang, said as if it explained everything.

"Yeah, in my dreams, almost everyone has holes in their chests. Sometimes the hole is higher or lower, but there's almost always a hole..."

There was a moment of silence in the room, before Taiyang added, "Ruby, you said it was all dream stuff. As in, not just the hole."

"Sometimes the dream people complain that I'm asleep for so much time between dreams, and awake for so little time during them. They say it can be anything from hours to months between each time I see them. I think I once slept for 3 years straight..."

"Ruby, promise me you won't fall asleep for 3 years!" Yang said, grabbing Ruby in another hug.

"Yang... stop... crushing..." Ruby said, with a wheeze.

"Not until you promise," Yang said.

"I... promise...!" Ruby said, gasping for breath as Yang let go. She then looked Yang straight in the eyes and repeated, "I promise."

It was truly touching to see how much the sisters cared for each other. Ozpin wished more families were like them; the only thing which could have made the moment sweeter was if he was holding his coffee instead of wearing it.

vvvvvv

Weiss was having a bad week.

It wasn't Ruby's fault. It wasn't Ruby's fault. She reminded herself again it wasn't Ruby's fault that team RWBY was stuck in quarantine.

No, it was Vale Medical's fault for waiting until after Ruby woke up to declare her condition an unknown disease instead of an injury. It was their fault that she just spent the last week cooped up with Yang and Blake, the former going stir-crazy with boredom and the latter proving surprisingly catty under these conditions.

But as of an hour ago and no additional symptoms affecting Ruby or anyone she was in contact with, they had hit the manditory maximum quarantine period for an unknown disease.

Which Blake had helpfully pointed out use to be four times longer twenty years ago when the Valian Council used god damn Quarantine Law to keep faunus out of the professional workplace.

Specifically, Schnee doctors working with the kingdom of Vale to abuse cheap faunus labor.

Blake knew more about how her family has abused faunus than anyone she had ever talked to, and after a week of the two being stuck together all these little factoids were starting to get on Weiss's nerves.

So the first thing she did was go outside, in spite of it being after 10:00 at night. Forget curfew, she was not spending another minute stuck in a tiny room with Blake and Yang.

The second thing she did was call father.

"Hello, you've reached Jacques Schnee, president of the Schnee dust company. Please leave a message and I will return your call at the earliest convenience."

Father wouldn't appreciate a message for the news, but he'd appreciate Weiss neglecting to call even less.

"Father, I am glad to report that the quarantine period for my team leader's condition has ended. While I understand your concerns, no one in contact with her has shown any additional symptoms," yet, "And Ruby's condition has been determined to be non-contagious," with 95% confidence, though she didn't plan on mentioning that other 5% unless he asked.

"Our team leader is being released from the hospital tomorrow morning," Weiss said. "In spite of the inconvenience, the Beacon staff has been very accomidating, and my new team has been using the time to work on our studies," when Yang wasn't devoting the time to come up with new puns she wanted to try. The blonde had a list. A list!

"Hey, Weiss is here!" a voice right in front of her shouted. Weiss looked up. Ruby was in a while hood and wearing a wolf skull, standing next to a girl wearing an indecent amount of clothing and a skull helmet. She had no idea how those two snuck up on her, they were about as subtle as a beowulf in that getup.

"Ruby, how could you know her, you've never been here before!" the skull-helmet girl said.

"...And I look forward to speaking with you in the morning father." Weiss said, closing her scroll as fast as she could. She then turned to the two girls. "Ruby, what are you doing with this, this...?"

"Lilynette?" Ruby finished for Weiss.

"Seriously? You know each other?" the indecent girl asked. Why did this girl think an open vest and a pair of underwear was appropiate? How did Ruby even know this person?

"Oh yeah, Weiss is on my team from that hunter school I keep telling you about," Ruby said, as if it explained everything.

"But Descorrer shouldn't go there!" Lilynette said, "That place doesn't exist!"

Ruby stared at the school, then at Weiss, before turning back to Lilynette. "It looks pretty real to me," Ruby shrugged.

"Lilynette, was it?" Weiss asked, interrupting the girl's rebuttal. She was only now noticing that the tattoo on her stomach wasn't a tattoo, but a hole like Ruby's. First thing first, introductions, then questions. "My name is Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee dust company."

"What, like, cobwebs and stuff?" Lilynette asked.

"No, no, you know, dust!" Ruby answered, earning a blank look from Lilynette. "I'll explain later."

"And I notice you and Ruby both share a hole through the stomache and chest area," Weiss powered through. "Why is that?"

"It's because we're dead." Lilynette says as though it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"We're not dead," Ruby replies.

"No, we're very dead," Lilynette replies back.

"Nah, if we were dead, we wouldn't be talking to each other."

"It's because we're ghosts Ruby."

"If we were ghosts then I would have died," Ruby says in response. "And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have forgotten my own death!"

"Most ghosts can't really remember their own death," Lilynette says.

"Wait, but, I can't be dead, I have a family and a team at Beacon and I was going to be a hunter!"

"Sorry Ruby. On the bright side, you get to work with Starrk."

"I guess," Ruby says, looking at the ground forlornly. "I still think you're wrong about me being dead!"

"Look, we can argue this all you want at Hueco Mundo, okay?"

"Fine," Ruby said. Then she opened a portal to a murky hell dimension right in front of Weiss what the hell.

"Wait, um, Ruby, since when were you friends with ghosts? Since when could you open magical fog portals?" Weiss asked.

"Forever, and since I just tried it five minutes ago. I'll tell you all about it when I fall asleep," Ruby said.

"This time are we going to the real earth instead of this shattered moon earth?" Lilynette asked.

"Hopefully!" Ruby said as the portal closed behind them, leaving no hint they were ever there.

Well.

Weiss suddenly had a strong desire to be cooped up safely in her dorm room with the catty faunus-rights supporter and blonde punmaggedon.

vvvvvv

"Yang." Weiss said.

"That was fast. Miss us already?" Yang asked, in a playful tone Weiss did not want to deal with.

"Where's Blake?" Weiss replied curtly.

"I dunno, the library?"

"Good," Weiss said. This conversation would be confusing enough with just Yang. "Do you know who Lillynette is?"

"...Yeah, I think that might be one of Ruby's friends?" Yang said.

"I think I just met her."

"Not likely," Yang said.

"She had a skull helmet, and she had a hole in her just like Ruby. They mentioned a place called 'Hueco Mundo' and were dressed with really stylized White Fang masks."

"That's not possible," Yang told Weiss. "We both know it's not possible."

"That's why I'm talking to you," Weiss said.

"Weiss," Yang said. "Am I a bad sister for hoping that it's what it sounded like, that Ruby and one of her friends are white fang sympathizers and they're just protesting faunus rights?"

"It's not my place to say," Weiss said, going for the diplomatic answer. She couldn't imagine what she or her father would do if Winter had the... challenges Ruby came with.

"This is the worst it's ever been," Yang said. "Ruby's a good little sister, she's smart, she's a prodigy among hunters, and she tries really hard not to worry her big sister and dad with the dream stuff. If you hadn't walked in on her and seen the hole for yourself, she would have kept going like nothing was wrong, with none of us the wiser." Yang looked Weiss in the eyes, every day of the past 10 years etched on her face, the older sister was the most exhausted Weiss had ever seen her. "The one thing that scares me more than the dreams being just dreams? That the dreams might be real. Usually I just ignore the problem, Dad does too, because neither of us know how to help her."

"So do me a favor," Yang said, grabbing Weiss by the shoulders. "I'm not sure what you saw, but can you pretend it didn't happen? That Ruby has a friend who is just a little overenthusiastic about faunus rights, I dunno. If she brings it up, sure, talk to her about it, but otherwise..." Yang looked away. "Worrying about this stuff has never helped Ruby."

"I don't think we should just do that," Weiss said. "We can't ignore that there's more going on than weird dreams. I mean, your sister looked like she was impaled, doesn't that worry you?"

"More than anything in my life," Yang replied. This was maybe the second time Weiss ever saw Yang look vulnerable, the first when she was watching over her sister in the infirmary. "Look, I get where you're coming from, but I want her to be as normal as she wants to be. Just, don't press her on this stuff, and give her a chance once she's out of the hospital."

"I'll... try," Weiss said.

Yang patted the smaller girl on the back. "Good enough for me, Weiss cream," Yang answered back with the smallest of smiles, earning a groan from Weiss.

vvvvvv

"Is this it?" Lilynette asked.

"The moon isn't shattered, so I guess so." Ruby replied. It was weird seeing the moon form a crescent like that. And it was so small compared to Remnant's.

The pair find themselves in the center of a quiet town road. "It kind of looks like your fake earth, except with more buildings. And shorter." Lilynette saids.

"What do you think all the other arrancar were doing here anyway?"

"I dunno. I just wanted to see new stuff," Lilynette said, looking around. "This place feels... weird. The buildings are too short and there's too many of them. And what's with all the wires? And trees? I didn't know there were still trees."

"Hueco Mundo is the weird place for not having them," Ruby replied back.

"Huh," Lilynette said. "Now what?"

"Now we go shopping I guess?" Ruby shrugged.

"What is shopping?"

"Right, you've never left Hueco Mundo, have you?"

"Nope!"

"Shopping is when you give people money to get stuff."

"Can't we just take their stuff? I'm pretty sure we're stronger than most of them." Lilynette replied.

"No, no, that wouldn't be fair to the stores," Ruby explained.

"I don't see why not. I mean, we're letting them live, aren't we?"

"That's really not how fairness works," Ruby said, holding Lilynette back.

Lilynette scoffed in response. "Have you met any of the other arrancar in Hueco Mundo? That's how they all act!"

"Lilynette, that's not a good thing!" Ruby said. "Look, Lilynette, we can look around, but you have to promise not to take anything while we're here. Be on your best behavior."

"Fine." Lilynette grumbled. "What's the deal with the place anyway? Why is everyone so interested in it?"

"You tell me," A redheaded boy growled in their direction, sword drawn.

"Oh wow, your sword is so huge!" Ruby said, zipping over. "How do you compensate for all the weight in the middle of the blade? Is there a reason you went for wrapped cloth on the handle? What's your sword's name? I named my scythe cresent rose, because the name just seemed to click, I want to hear all about how you forged the stee-mmphf!"

"Sorry, Ruby here can get a little overenthusiastic," Lilynette shrugged, covering Ruby's mouth.

"Look, I'm only going to say this once," the man said. "Go home. And tell Aizen he can piss off."

Ruby freed herself from Lilynette to say, "But we just got here!"

"And we're never going to let you have your way with Karakura town," the man replied.

"You mean buying clothes and stuff?"

"I mean your plan to kill hundreds of thousands of people!"

Ruby and Lilynette both stared, before Lilynette broke the silence, "Are you high?"

"Aizen's plan? To create a key to the king of soul society? Using one hundred thousand souls?"

Ruby said simply, "Aizen wouldn't do that. I mean, he is a soul reaper, but he's not the kind that reaps souls, he's the kind that rebels against the soul reapers to save all the arrancar."

"What?" the redhead replied.

"Yeah, the soul reapers are the bad guys here. They're trying to kill all the arrancar. Killing hundreds of thousands of people is totally something they'd do," Ruby said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Staring at the two with the best 'You are an idiot' expression Ruby had ever seen, the man said, "Have either of you even met a soul reaper before?"

Lilynette piped in with pride, "I'll have you know I work with 3 different shinigami captains back at Hueco Mundo!"

"Although they look just like regular people to me," Ruby added.

"Yeah, I mean, they look just like people, but they're also ghosts?" Lilynette said. "Like, they're ghosts that don't have holes that really like killing arrancar? As opposed to hollows or regular ghosts."

The man then hardened his stance and said, "You do realize that I'm a soul reaper, right?"

"You are?" Ruby and Lilynette said. Lilynette then added, "Wait, you do want to kill us too? Does this mean we have to kill you?"

"Before you do that," A 4th man said from the roof of a nearby building, surprising the other 3. The man adjusted his striped hat and continued, "Let me tell you how Sosuke Aizen came to betray the Soul Society"

vvvvvv

"So what you're saying, is that Aizen," Lilynette finally said after the man, Urahara, finished his story, "...is a dick."

"Pretty much," Urahara shrugged.

"He killed thousands of soul reapers trying to build an army!" replied the redheaded man, Ichigo. "And he's planning on killing thousands more!"

Lilynette continued, "And that's what makes him a dick."

"You got it," Urahara said.

"And the soul reapers would leave us alone if Aizen wasn't leading us?" Lilynette asked.

Urahara shrugged. "They don't care what you do in Hueco Mundo as long as you leave the living world alone."

"But none of that makes sense!" Ruby said "I mean, I get that he wants power, and that this has all been about power for him, but why? Why do all that? Why does he need power so badly?"

"Assuming everything this guy says checks out," Lilynette said.

"Of course," Urahara replied. "Just ask him. Aizen would probably tell you all this if you just knew to ask. If not him, then one of his subbordinates. Gin wouldn't shy away from telling you the truth, if only to see the look on your faces."

"But it's just power! He's already really strong! Did the soul society at least betray him or something?" Ruby asked. "There has to be more to it than that, right?"

"Power is the most important thing to a lot of people," Urahara said with a tiny smirk. "Everyone wants to be the strongest."

"No, they don't," Lilynette replied simply.

"No, they don't," Urahara agreed.

Ichigo looked between the two of them, and went to ask Ruby, "What the hell are they talking about?"

"Me and Starrk used to kill everyone around us with our reiatsu," Lilynette answered for Ruby. "Aizen is the reason why we're having this conversation, instead of me watching you choke to death under the force of my spiritual pressure."

"That's absurd. You?"

Suddenly neither Ichigo nor Urahara found themselves able to stand, forced to the ground under the surge in spiritual pressure that threatened to crush them. Then, just as quickly as it came on, it stopped.

"Yes, me," Lilynette said.

"Now aren't you glad I stopped you from fighting them?" Urahara asked, regaining his footing.

"Bastard," Ichigo grunted in reply.

vvvvvv

"Why did you betray soul society?" Lilynette asked Aizen, Ruby by her side.

Aizen's throne was the largest chair Ruby had ever seen, designed for an arrancar 3 times the size of the already towering man. Anyone else would have looked tiny sitting there. But Aizen's absolute confidence dared anyone to say he didn't belong there, which was the only reason he pulled it off.

Aizen smiled, "I want to become one with the Hogyoku."

"Your power gem? Why." Lilynette pressed.

"It will allow me to ascend beyond the powers of shinigami and hollows, and reach the soul king," Aizen replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"And does reaching the Soul King require sacrificing a hundred thousand souls?" the short arrancar continued.

Aizen nodded to himself. "I see you've been asking around. Yes, that is part of my plan."

"And why do you want to reach the Soul King,"

"The knowledge and power I gain there will allow me to ascend further," Aizen stated, as though it were fact instead of ambition. "Soon, I will surpass even Him."

"But why?" Lilynette pressed. "Aizen, why do you want to do all this? Is it because you want to lead the arrancar to a new golden age, to rule soul society, to be able to blow up buildings with a twitch? Endless years in an endless desert taught me all that power is pointless if you don't have anything you want to use it on."

Aizen leaned back in his throne and asked in response, "Why do birds fly?"

"I dunno," Lilynette answered. "Because they can?"

"Exactly," Aizen replied.

As Ruby watched on, Lilynette took about half a second to glare at the man, and said, "You're an idiot," before storming off. With a yell, she added, "Don't fly too close to the sun."

It took Lilynette a minute to realize Ruby wasn't following her, which was really throwing a wrench into Lilynette's dramatic exit. "Hey, Ruby, come on, we're done here-"

"What about Karakura town?" Ruby asked Aizen.

"They're a necessary sacrifice," Aizen said matter-of-factly.

"No they're not!" Ruby shouted. "None of this is necessary! All you've ever done is sacrifice people, and for what? So you can get power from a magic rock? You're the leader of Hueco Mundo! You have an army of arrancar that equals the soul reapers! Why are you throwing us away just so you can punch things harder?"

"Because I can," Aizen replied. "And because I have the power to do so."

"That's it? That's the reason?" Ruby asked.

"I could lie and say it's to help the arrancar or to save Soul Society from itself, but those are just happy coincidences," Aizen replied. "And if I lied, you might try to subvert the plan. Stop the deaths that need to happen from happening. Because I agree, the plan is distasteful. But it is necessary for me to obtain the power I want. And you and your fellow arrancar will help me. Because I am strong, because I am the leader that gives them what they want, and because I make no secret of where they stand beneath me. For your Primera Espada, I am the reason he can meet other arrancar. For the others, I am the leader that has the strength to keep them from killing each other for food. Or the leader with the power to stand up to soul society. Or the benefactor that gives them the materials they need for their research. Or simply a convenient source of food that only asks a few small favors."

"We're not going to help you murder people by the thousands!" Ruby shouted back.

"You will. You might not be on the front lines, but you will help me. Because I am the leader you need. I'm the leader all the arrancar need. That is how I became the King of Hueco Mundo."

Ruby glared at the man, before stomping after Lilynette. As she did so, she added, "I doubt you care, but thank you for saving Starrk and Lilynette."

"And when the people you attach yourself to need it, I hope you have the power to save them," Aizen called to the two girls as they departed.

vvvvvv

"We shouldn't be in Aizen's war," Ruby said. The three of them all had beanbag chairs for this meeting; one of the many benefits of Starrk being the Primero Espada.

The Segunda Espada Baraggan would argue that this was an absolute waste of the priveleges, but then again he would argue that arrancar should be executed on the spot for choosing to retreat rather than die, so the trio didn't put much stock in his opinion.

"It would only leave a whole bunch of us dead, just to make Aizen stronger," Starrk added. "There's no point."

"So. What do we do." Lilynette stated more than asked.

"We owe the man our lives," Starrk said.

"I wouldn't mind if he were asking us to fight to protect Hueco Mundo," Ruby said. "But this is different."

"The other arrancar will follow him to die regardless," Starrk said. "The others don't care about civilians, or even understand what a civilian is. And the ones that do care are too afraid to go against Aizen's orders."

"Should we be protecting them?" Lilynette asked.

"If that's the case, then I definitely should not be helping Aizen fight," Starrk added. "All his plans involve me being on the front lines with other arrancar."

"That's really stupid," Lilynette said. "You can't go all out if there are other arrancar around, your reiatsu would kill them!"

"I almost wonder if Aizen's counting on that," Stark said.

"Huh?" Ruby asked, turning to Starrk. "Why wouldn't he want you to go all out?"

"Aizen can beat all the other arrancar in combat if he needs to. But he's never tried to fight me. All his invasion plans have me going against the toughest pair or trio of soul reapers they send, while surrounded by the other arrancar," Starrk stared into the distance a bit, before finishing, "I think he's either testing me or trying to kill me on a soul reaper's sword."

"That's terrible!" Lilynette and Ruby agreed, to which Starrk shrugged. Ruby continued, "Listen, Starrk, I don't care what you have to do, you're not allowed to die."

"Not to give a power boost to a jackass with a megalomania complex, that's for sure," Lilynette added.

"It's not going to work," Starrk explained. "No one in all of Hueco Mundo is stronger than me, not even Aizen."

"But the Soul Reapers are from outside of Hueco Mundo you idiot!" Lilynette explained.

"This is their job!" Ruby continued. "They live for taking us down! That's the point of a soul reaper!"

Starrk looked at the two girls, then said, "Alright, alright, when we fight them I won't play around. I won't hold back, even if it ends up hurting my allies. And win or lose, I'll come back alive. But I am fighting. I owe Aizen that much."

"That's right you're coming back!" Lilynette shouted back to Starrk, "None of us are allowed to die, and don't you forget it!"

Ruby frowned, adding, "But what about all those people in Karakura town? And all the weaker arrancar Aizen will also send?"

Starrk looked at Ruby for a moment, frowning himself, "I can't do anything to save them."

"What? Why not?" Ruby asked.

"Aizen has at least 3 other arrancar who will kill them with their spiritual pressure alone," Starrk explained. "Once the fighting begins, all he'll need the other arrancar to do is to release their reiatsu and the town will be toast. And the arrancar will be forced to do that just to fight the soul reapers." Starrk leaned back, continuing, "Honestly, the only reason he hasn't done it already is because then he'd have to fight all the soul reapers at once, and he's not yet ready for that."

"But then, the whole town...?"

"I'm sorry, Ruby."

"Lilynette, back me up here," Ruby replied.

"No, he's right. If Aizen wants to destroy the town, we can't stop him," Lilynette said.

"But... but..." Ruby said. But neither of her friends had an answer for her.

vvvvvv

Nora had the whole afternoon to herself. Ren was working on martial artsy stuff, and Pyrrha and Jaune were training together which Nora would have assumed was code for making out in a closet, except Pyrrha was being coy and Jaune was being dumb.

That meant she got to spend the afternoon making new kinds of grenades for Magnhild! Since no one was around for her to accidentally blow up. Again.

*knock* *knock* *knock* went the door.

Nora looked up. That was a new knock to her, which meant it couldn't have been Ren because he would have just come in! And it couldn't have been Pyrrha or Jaune, because when they knocked they always asked if everyone was decent after the first time!

"Come in!" Nora called.

"Hi," Ruby said. Everyone knew Ruby, she led the team that was just quarantined for a week! Ruby continued, "Hey, do you know where I can find an oven?"

Nora gasped. "Are you baking? I love baking! Let's do it together!"

"Yeah," Ruby said, indicating the paper bag in her arms. "I'm making apology cookies, you know, for the whole quarantine thing."

"You can't help being sick. I'm sure they understand!"

"I know, but I still feel like I let them down," Ruby replied. "And maybe this will cheer them up?"

"Well, to be fair, no one feels bad after a good plate of cookies!" Nora started jabbering, dragging Ruby into the room. Like a whirlwind, Nora was throwing bowls and knives out from under her bed, as Ruby caught and dodged the respective cooking implements. Finally she came out with a huge chef hat and took Ruby's bag, dumping all the ingredients on a cutting board. "This is a new recipe I've been wanting to try," she explained, ripping open the flour bag and covering herself in the process. She then emptied the carton of eggs into the flour, before getting out her mighty hammer of justice! Was there anything Magnhild couldn't do? Well, lots of things, but breaking eggs was not on that list!

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Ruby asked as the hammer came crashing down. The cutting board Nora was working with was smashed in two, and the two girls were covered in egg and flour, but that was just part of baking when Nora did it.

"Nope! That's what makes it a surprise!" Nora said, emptying the sugar bag, the chocolate chip bag, and the butter into the mess on the floor. She then pulled out a microwave from under her bed, scooped a blob of the mixture off the floor, then stuck it in there for an hour. That should make sure the inside of Nora's Super Cookie (patent pending) was cooked this time!

"Now, we wait," Nora finished, laying in front of the microwave in complete concentration. "This is the tricky part, you have to take them out at just the right time or they won't taste right!"

"Oh." Ruby said, staring at the microwave with Nora. After a minute, Ruby said, "So, I'm Ruby..."

"Oh my god, I forgot to introduce myself!" Nora started rambling. "I'm Nora Valkerie, hunter extrodanaire and baker of legends! Or at least Ren thinks so!"

"Cool." Ruby said. "I like your hammer."

"This thing?" Nora continued, dragging out her precious Magnhild. "It's a rocket hammer! I outfitted it so it can convert into a grenade launcher too!" Nora said, flipping it into it's other mode. "Her name's Magnhild."

"She's awesome!" Ruby said, pulling out her scythe. "This is Crescent Rose, my high-impact sniper-scythe! I can kill a beowulf at 100 yards with her!"

"What Magnhild lacks in range she more than makes up for in power! Her standard grenades will decapitate a deathstalker, and let me show you the custom ones I'm making for a rainy day..."

vvvvvv

"Have you thought of mixing fire and lightning dust in your rounds?" Nora asked.

"Wouldn't that just explode in your face?"

"Only about half the-cookie!" Nora shouted.

"Cooki-oh," Ruby said.

The cookie was on fire.

Fortunately, Nora knew exactly what to do in this situation. She ripped a CO2 fire extinguisher from under the bed, opened the microwave door, and started spraying everything in the room. You can never be to careful with fire! Fire is the enemy! And the enemy can be very sneaky indeed.

And then the smoke alarm went off.

"What is going on in there!" Jaune shouted, barging into the room in a combat stance. Silly Jaune. You can't fight fire with swords! Wait, but if you could fight fire with swords, the you could train hunters to fight fires! Nora made a note to look up fighting fires with swords later.

Oh look, the rest of her team was there too! Along with the rest of Ruby's team!

"Apology cookie!" Nora said, thrusting the giant ball of burned dough into Weiss's hands.

"You know, because I got you all quarantined?" Ruby muttered. "Sorry."

Ren looked at the two, then looked at the room around them. Ruby was covered in egg and flour. Nora was covered in egg and flour. Actually, pretty much everything in JNPR's room was covered in egg and flour.

Nora followed Ren's gaze, having the decency to look sheepish for all of two seconds, before saying "Right, cleaning, I'll go get the mop, Ruby, you shut off the alarm!"

"Nora," Ren said calmly. "You and your new friend, go get cleaned up. I'll get started on the room."

"Right on, Ren!" Nora saluted, before zipping into the bathroom.

Weiss, still holding the giant burned-on-the-top dripping-on-the-bottom 'cookie', was the first to speak. "Does this happen a lot?" She asked.

Ren smiled, picking up Magnhild from it's spot on the floor and using the reach of the hammer to shut off the smoke alarm. "Only when she tries to cook."

vvvvvv

By the time JNPR's room was cleaned, the burnt cookie dough properly disposed of, and Nora and Ruby were defloured, it was pretty late at night. Team RWBY was officially esablished a week ago, but this was the first night Ruby would actually get to sleep in the team's dorm room. Last time didn't count, since she spent most of it in Beacon's infirmary.

Ruby left the bathroom dressed for bed. She decided it was better for everyone if they didn't have to see the hole again. No reason to make her team worry any more than they were.

"So, Rubes," Yang said. "Anything we need to know? About your condition, I mean."

"Not really," Ruby replied. "None of the doctors could find any, ah, 'expected symptoms', they just said to 'keep the affected area clean'."

"That's good." Yang said. She then lowered her voice to a whisper, "You know you can talk to me about anything."

Ruby looked at the ceiling. There was one thing. "You ever meet someone who you thought was good and helped you out, only to find out they were planning to do terrible things."

"Yes," Blake cut in immediately, her nose still in her book.

Ruby and Yang both looked at Blake, waiting for her to elaborate. When it became obvious she wouldn't say any more, Ruby asked, "What did you do?"

"I left."

"Oh." Ruby said. "I don't think that's an option."

The room lapsed into silence again. The kind of silence daring its inhabitants to break it, where everyone knew they wanted to speak but nobody knew what they wanted to say.

Finally, Yang spoke. "Rubes, talk to me. I'm your sister, I don't care if it's a little weird."

"No, no, it's nothing like that," Ruby said. "Or at least it's nothing real."

Blake and Weiss both glanced in Ruby and Yang's direction, Yang shaking her head. The message was clear: Ruby would talk about it when she wanted to talk about it.

Finally making up her mind, Yang said, "It doesn't have to be real. I'll still listen."

"I know," Ruby said, lying herself in bed. "And if there really was someone like that you'd be the first to know." She then laid on her side so she could look at Yang, "I dunno, it's just a vague feeling, you know? A minute ago I was sure that one of my heroes is about to do something terrible, but I can't think of anyone like that."

"Well that's a good thing, isn't it?" Yang replied.

"You're probably right," Ruby said, drifting to sleep. "Goodnight Yang... Weiss... Blake..."

"Goodnight Ruby," Yang said.

But Ruby was already dreaming of a castle amidst endless sands.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Ruby noticed was the shaking.

The second thing was the missing wall.

And the third thing was the giant monster rampaging just outside.

Wait a second, she knew that giant monster!

"Yammy?" she shouted.

As soon as she said that, she was forced to sonido out of Yammy's way as he was smashed through her room by... a tidal wave of flower petals? What on Remnant was going on?

"Yammy! What's happening? Why are you being attacked by flowers?" the girl asked from atop Yami's head.

Yammy roared back, "Get the hell out of here!" as Ruby barely dodged being grabbed by the enraged arrancar, leaping for the ground before another tidal wave of petals could crush her into the giant's chest.

She blasted away from the giant, putting as much space between her and Yammy as she could. As she did so she almost passed two men with swords.

Almost.

The larger, spiky haired of the two dashed in front of her at a speed most could only reach with sonido, bringing his sword down with a slash that cleaved the ground itself in half and missing Ruby by a hair. The short one rocketed a thousand of the petals after Ruby at speeds that tested even her.

Then both men suddenly dodged to opposite sides as Yammy let loose the largest cero Ruby had ever seen. Forced to pick a side, Ruby flashed alongside the one with the spiky hair.

"Another arrancar, huh?" The giant man said, as if they were having lunch, and not fighting to the death. "You're going to die if you don't release, you know that?"

"My release?" Ruby asked.

"Your release. Let it out. Killing you wouldn't be fun if I didn't let you use it."

Ruby blinked twice, before saying, "Oh. Oh! That thing! Uh, Release!" Ruby shouted, waving her scyth around as the man gave her a smile that screamed for blood. "Change! Power up! Super Ruby, Activate! Uh..." How did all the other arrancar do this? They had special words or something right? Ruby was really wishing she had done this when soul reapers weren't trying to murder her, "Arise! Alert! Atone!" What could it be, what that guy was getting really antsy, "Awaken!"

She wasn't sure what made her choose that last word, but her scythe disappeared! Which probably wasn't good!

Oh, but she had the werewolf thing going on again, so that was good at least! Maybe. Probably.

"Okay crazy guy, I did the thing, now can we maybe talk or some-woah! Timeout! Stop!" Ruby said as the man raised his sword, then dropped upon her like a cleaver. She crossed blade-like claws above her head, meeting the sword mid-swing and... that worked? Oh look, that worked! Sure the crater she was standing in wasn't there before but she wasn't dead, so that's another win for Ruby, right?

And somehow, the way the man's manic grin grew even wider didn't make it feel like a win.

Even caught within her claws, the man's next horizontal slash blasted her straight into the path of another one of Yammy's super-ceros. Sonido!

"Hey, fraccion trash, get the hell out of here! These two shinigami are mine!" Yammy roared.

"I'm trying!" Ruby shouted back "Wait, shinigami? We're under attack?"

"Where have you been for the past 8 hours!" Yammy shouted, meeting spiky-haired dude's sword with a punch.

"Sleeping!" Ruby shouted back, slicing a path half a step from the flower-petal blizzard that was trying to crush her.

"Just do your sonido thing out of here! Make your way to Karakura!" Yammy replied, his hundred-foot cero at the flower guy intercepted by a mountain of petals.

"But what about these guys?" Ruby asked, just as Yammy grapped her with one of his monsterous hands, curling the boney werewolf into a ball "Wait, what are you doing-" Yammy then chucked the girl like a fastball, shattering the sound barrier with his pitch.

"You sure that was a good idea?" The spiky-haired man snorted, "A little girl would have been just what you needed to make this fight worth my time."

Splitting the ground where the man had just stood with a single punch, Yammy shouted back in total, near-incoherent fury, "After pissing me off this much? You're heads will be mine and mine alone, shinigami!"

vvvvvv

Ruby braced for impact as she struck the outer wall of the fortress-city of Las Noches, passing straight through it, then started rolling on the ground. She dug her claws into the floor as she skidded straight through the second wall that divided the inside of Las Noches from the outside, rolling across the sands under the eternal night of the deserts outside before finally, she was able to cushion the impact on a sand dune.

The first thought Ruby had was "I'm alive?"

The second was, "Really, Yammy? Really?"

And the third was, "Wait a second, Karakura town? Aizen started already?"

Ruby ripped open a couple descorrers until she found one that correctly got her to Karakura town and was immediately struck by how Starrk the place was.

She internally chuckled at her own pun. For it was also a very stark set of ruins. Which, upon reflection, kind of horrified her because that meant a lot of people must be dead. On top of that, the sleepy aura thing around Starrk was ten times stronger than she had ever seen it before they joined up with Aizen. It felt like it could level buildings, which is probably how all the nearby buildings got leveled.

She sonido'd towards the ceros and fire lighting up the sky, idly wondering why the streets were so empty. Realizing the answer couldn't possibly be good, she decided to avoid thinking about that as hard as she could until they were out of here and away from all the soul reapers that wanted to kill them.

Only 3 other people were still standing; Aizen, Starrk, and some really buff shirtless old guy rocking the wise-guru beard. Ruby would be impressed if he wasn't trying to cut Starrk in two! Each of their spiritual pressures clashed in the air, creating whirlwinds of energies that could have killed lesser arrancar; if the old man was a river, Starrk was the ocean, and Aizen an island, noticeable as a spot the ocean hadn't yet swallowed up.

If Starrk had all the power, then old guy had all the skill. Old guy fought like a veteran, every strike sure, every movement efficient. It was how he was able to keep up so easily with Starrk's clumsy, supersonic sword slashes and inaccurate, lightning-fast ceros; Starrk stance was terrible, his aim was always a second behind the old guy, he needed to strike 4 times for the every one slash the old guy made just to keep up, he fought like this was his first time! Which, knowing about Starrk's reiatsu incontenence, made a lot of sense to Ruby. Why would Starrk have ever needed to fight when sitting still was just as effective?

Ruby Sonido'd behind old guy in a flash, slashing with her claws as the man blocked another sword strike from the front. And in spite of the direct hit, she failed to even scratch him. "Wha-" Ruby said, before the man's other hand hit her with a palm-strike that shattered one of her outer-ribs.

"Child, your reiatsu's so weak you cannot even scratch my skin," the man growled, slashing a wave of flame at Ruby. "And I have no time for children!"

Ruby ducked under the flames trying to char her bones, then leaped forward to pin the man down as he brought his sword back up to meet Ruby's chin. Ruby barely intercepted the blade with claws rapidly blackening from the heat as Starrk aimed his gun at the shinigami's head and fired a cero the size and speed of a bullet. The shinigami dodged, lurching forward into Ruby and smashing another palm down into Ruby's forhead, crashing the girl into the earth.

"Better sit this one out," Starrk said. "This guy's more in my league."

Old guy then turned to Starrk, the two men clashing blades in the middle of the battlefield, old guy's flames against Starrk's pure reiatsu. Then, Aizen took out his sword, the void in Starrk's pressure moved from where Aizen stood.

And both the old shinigami and Starrk were impaled.

vvvvvv

"What happened? Starrk? Old guy? Aizen, what's going on?" Ruby started blabbering.

Then the weird stuff continued happening. Ruby saw Aizen appear where Starrk was laying, but still exerting Starrk's massive reiatsu, and Starrk where Aizen was just standing, the void in pressue having returned there. How did that work? Did Aizen steal Starrk's powers? Why did he wait until now? And why was he monologing instead of finishing the job?

The man opened his vest, where Ruby saw a jewel embedded into his abs. "It's simple really," he said. "The Hogyokou only recognizes the strongest soul as its master, the soul that rises above all others. It began to doubt that I was that soul when in the presense of the arrancar and the shinigami. So I killed them."

"But... but that's terrible! He trusted you!"

"He did, and he was a loyal subordinate," Aizen said casually. "But he was no longer-"

Ruby sonido'd over to Stark's body, ignoring Aizen's monologue in favor of lifting him over her shoulder because she had to get him out of here now and... "Ruby, it's too late for me... Avenge me, Ruby."

"No, you're still alive, I can still save you," Ruby said, teleporting away from Aizen in burst after burst as Aizen chased her down.

"Ruby, you have to kill Aizen first!" Starrk said, with a bloody cough. "Put me down and finish him off!"

"I can't keep you safe and fight him!" Ruby shouted back, narrowly dodging a vertical slash.

"God damn it Ruby," Starrk said, and started... awkwardly slashing at Ruby's back? Why is Starrk trying to kill her? And why are his attacks so weak? I mean, sure at the angle she had him lifted up he'd have a hard time getting purchase but if he wanted to hurt her he could have just used his cero! He didn't need a sword for that!

And why did the Aizen chasing them keep getting replaced with Starrk every time Starrk hit her back with his sword?

What the hell was going on!

Ruby reached behind her and grabbed the bladed edge of the sword with her claws, ripping it out of Starrk's hands because although he wasn't penetrating her boney hide, if he kept it up she was sure he would eventually get through.

And then, Starrk stopped being Starrk and Aizen stopped being Aizen.

Why was she holding Aizen? Why was Starrk chasing her? Was it some weird teleportation thing? Shape shifters? An illusion? Nothing was making any sense!

"Ruby, give me my sword now!" Aizen said as Starrk chopped a tremendous slash across his back.

Ruby desperately used her borrowed blade to block Starrk's next slash, but Aizen's sword shattered the moment the two blades clashed.

Then Starrk froze.

"Ruby?" Starrk asked.

"Starrk?" Ruby replied.

vvvvvv

Aizen... has had better days.

The Hogyoku, the gem of power he was using to fuel himself, was beginning to reject him.

The gem wanted its master to be the strongest, smartest, greatest soul.

And right now the gem was starting to think that wasn't him. That the greatest soul was either Coyote Starrk or Captain Commander Yamamato.

The plan was to wait for the perfect opportunity, kill both of them, then if either of them somehow survived being impaled, because for some reason impaling never seems to work, his zanpakuto's hypnosis abilities would get everyone to murder each other and prove to the hogyoku he was the best.

The plan was not to be made off with by a little girl who thought he was her BFF.

"Ruby, it's too late for me... Avenge me, Ruby," he said to Ruby, appearing as Starrk to her. He then used his zanpakuto's special ability to make Starrk see himself, Aizen, taking away Ruby.

"No, you're still alive, I can still save you," Ruby said, teleporting away from Starrk in burst after burst as Starrk chased her down.

"Ruby, you have to kill Aizen first!" Aizen said, struggling in her grasp. "Put me down and finish him off!"

"I can't keep you safe and fight him!" Ruby shouted back, narrowly dodging a vertical slash from the enraged Starrk that just as narrowly dodged Aizen's face.

"God damn it Ruby," Aizen said, deciding it would be easier to kill the girl, even though her touching his sword would break the hypnosis. And... it was deflected by her hide completely! What the hell was this girl made of?

Right, this was a girl who lived with Starrk, of course she would be unreasonably tough by normal standards.

But before Aizen could get a better grip, Ruby reached back and took his sword and that was not something Aizen needed to be dealing with as the girl dodged the wrong way.

Getting slashed across the back? Not fun.

Seeing your zanpakuto sliced in half? Even less fun.

"Ruby?" Starrk asked.

"Starrk?" Ruby replied.

Crap. Time to think fast.

vvvvvv

Starrk turned to Aizen. "You have 5 seconds to-"

"Guard up. Now." Aizen replied, snatching the hilt of his blade off the ground as he coughed up blood. If nothing else went right today, at least neither of them knew how his zanpakuto worked, which might buy him the few moments he needed. "I didn't think it was possible, but I underestimated Soul Society."

"Explain," Starrk said. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you."

"Hypnosis," Aizen replied, applying the full power of the Hogyoku to repairing his blade. "I gave up on the technology decades ago thinking it was too finicky, but it looks like Soul Society's new captain of research and development was able to succeed where I failed. The technique they used is attached to a persons zanpakuto, against the user's will." Normally Aizen would have gone for the big lie, but he had to think fast if he didn't want to be cut down immediately. A couple half truths to give him the seconds he needed to repair his blade came easily to the man.

"Plain English, now," Starrk said curtly. Examining Starrk, he looked extremely winded, which is much less than Aizen was hoping for after impaling him, but better than nothing.

"They've perfected their hypnosis technology, and during the fight the captain commander tied such a seal to my blade. If it weren't for Ruby, breaking it, we'd all be killing each other instead of the soul reapers," Aizen said. 3 more seconds until the Hogyoku repaired his blade.

"That sounds like a blatant lie," Starrk replied.

"It is," Aizen agreed, with an odd smile that he knew contrasted completely with how he was bleeding out. But that didn't matter to the man. His blade was fully repaired, and that meant he had all the time in the world to fix himself up as the the other 3 tried to beat him down.

In an instant Aizen's image was swapped with Ruby. It seemed like a pretty good idea, until Starrk charged him. Why was Starrk charging him? Oh soul king, Starrk was charging him, Aizen barely managed to deflect the blow.

"A word of advice?" Starrk said. "If you're going to hypnotize me into killing my partner, at least do a good job of it." This made no sense, Starrk shouldn't be able to tell where he was! ...Wait.

This much spiritual pressure? This maelstorm of oppressive death bearing down on everyone in the area?

They didn't have to see him, they just had to aim at the spot that wasn't exerting overwhelming death. Even a child should be able to notice, he was the calm eye of this storm of reiatsu barely staying afloat, the one place that isn't forcing itself into existence hard enough so as to instantly kill lesser souls. His zanpakuto was acting as a god damn beacon just by virtue of not being crushed under the force of Starrk and Yamamoto.

Well, Aizen thought, just all the more reason to evolve beyond his blade. He forced his reiatsu into the stone on his chest, and evolved.

vvvvvv

Aizen had hypnotized Starrk to try to fool him into killing his partner by making Starrk see Aizen where Ruby was standing.

Aizen hadn't included the difference in the nature of spiritual pressure between the two.

Starrk supposed he couldn't have, seeing as Ruby's special abilities made her feel inherently different from most hollows. Most hollows would die because their bodies tried to stand out in defiance of Starrk's life force, and he had yet to meet a hollow that succeeded.

But Ruby, she saturated herself with Starrk's spiritual pressure, sleeping away any resistance in her body until she was almost completely accustomed to it.

And Aizen didn't. His body resisted Starrk's force a hundred times harder than Ruby's, which made it easy to figure out who was who. Because Starrk knew Ruby's pressure like the back of his hand. And Starrk knew Aizen was not the elderly veteran that could stand before him for hours, who felt like a mountain standing in defiance of a storm. Although had Aizen come up with a different tale, Starrk might have still hesitated.

But if Starrk's suspicions were correct, and Aizen's abilities were hypnosis and illusions?

Then the feel of the spiritual pressure alone made figuring out who was where pretty obvious. He could feel how Aizen's sword itself resisted him, tried to exist in spite of him, somehow managing to keep its head above the water just that little bit longer in defiance of him, and that was why Starrk knew where to look.

And after being rammed through the stomach by this jackass, he was not feeling mercyful.

Of course, knowing where Aizen was and being able to fight him were two different issues. Because for every horizontal slash his eyes told him Ruby was executing, Starrk found himself tanking a glancing verticle blow from Aizen. Knowing where Aizen was didn't protect him from how the man launched his attacks.

And then, Aizen's illusion shattered, revealing the reaper underneath. Except to call Aizen a soul reaper at this stage was like calling a hollow an arrancar; maybe technically true but really failing to capture what Starrk was seeing.

Aizen had wings. Aizen had giant, sequential holes in his chest and stomach, with his hogyoku levitating in the center of the one over his heart. Aizen's face look like a black skull that wanted to murder Starrk. And Aizen's reiatsu finally caught up to Starrk's.

And Starrk understood. No hollow could stand before the Primera Espada. The only soul reaper that could was bleeding out a mile away. So Aizen decided to become both, even if it meant being a monster.

vvvvvv

Starrk did away with his swords, he hated to admit it but the old shinigami made it obvious to him swords weren't the way to go, instead opting for his dual pistols.

"Lilynette, you ready to kill our boss?"

"Yeah, lets murder that asshole!" the guns replied back, earning a smile from Starrk.

Aizen, if he still was the man Starrk met before the transformation took hold, replied, "While I like your initiative, you should stick to goals that are still possible."

And then Starrk unleashed a machine gun's worth of ceros into the monster's face.

Feeling the displacement of the air behind him, Starrk raised his gun just in time to block a slash of the monster's zanpakuto, then met the Aizen's face with his other gun. The two unleashed cero after cero at point blank range, Aizen from his mouth and Starrk from his gun, as Starrk used his other gun to block Aizen's sword and nail the monster straight through the gut.

Three of Aizen's holes became one; then in an instant they repaired themselves as Aizen laughed off the hit. "What did I tell you about sticking with what's possible?"

"What are you...? Why won't you die when I shoot you?" the guns asked the monster, to which the monster laughed.

"Even if the Hogyoku rejects me, I am its master. I forced it to my will. And my will is to be immortal, all powerful, and undefeatable."

"...So if we destroy the Hogyoku," Stark replied bluntly, "You'll be none of those things?"

"Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?" Aizen asked. "Can you destroy a wish or a dream?"

In a flash Starrk lurched forward, thrusting his gun through the gem levitating within the hole in Aizen's chest, and pulled the trigger over and over.

"I already told you it's use-" Aizen began, before interrupting himself to launch Starrk away with a furious punch to the man's face.

"Useless, huh?" Starrk said as he skidded to a halt, working the kinks out of his neck as he looked Aizen over. The gem was cracked and the monster was bleeding from its mouth.

Aizen glared back, lifted up his zanpakuto, then charged, his pressure outspeeding his body towards Starrk as the real fight began.

vvvvvv

When Aizen got serious, Ruby got worried.

She kind of understood what was going on, that Aizen was doing some illusionary hypnosis thing to mess with their senses, and that the only real loophole is she could kind of tell where it was by the direction Starrk's reiatsu wasn't *yawn* pressing on her, making her want to just pass out for a few days. It might have been harder to figure out had Aizen not pretty much spelled it out with the "soul society is hypnotizing us" explanation.

Well, she hoped it was illusions, if it was something completely different Ruby figured he would have killed them by now.

The problem was sure, they knew where Aizen was, or at least where the monster thing that used to be Aizen, but they didn't know what he was doing, and that made the fight a whole lot more dangerous. Starrk was simply firing off salvos of ceros straight into where the two of them felt Aizen was standing, flattening the town around them but the guy was really fast and if Starrk got too close Aizen could gut him without either of them seeing it! Aizen was creating valleys with every sword slash and this was insane!

Not to mention the hole in Starrk's stomach! How was he still even moving, let alone flying around like that!

Ruby had no idea if Aizen had even been hit yet, because every time the man appeared to be shot, he vanished, to appear half a second later completely unharmed. But she knew Starrk was in trouble, because for every time it looked like Starrk landed a solid blow, Aizen cleaved another slash into Starrk's body with earth shattering force. Even if no one cut would take Starrk down, she was looking at a dozen slashes across Starrk's chest and arms so far! One solid hit from that monster and he'd be done for!

They needed to end this somehow! Uh, think Ruby think, well, she had a terrible idea but it was better than no idea!

She sonido'd behind both Aizen and the spiritual pressure of Aizen and just kind of sort of lunged her hands where she hoped the guy's new holes were.

She was bashed through a building for her trouble. "Ow, ow, ow," Ruby said, one side of her outer-ribs caved in. That was a terrible idea!

But to be fair, she was having trouble thinking of ideas that didn't amount to "grab Aizen's gem" or "grab Aizen's sword," so she decided to try it again!

Jump in, get the other half of her rib-cage caved in, jump in, have her mask cracked in two through the middle, she was starting to feel a little woozy now, jump in a 4th time during imaginary Aizen's monolog about how resistance was futile she and she was throwing away her life blah blah blah. And she actually managed to wrap her arm around something! Success! And she wasn't dead either, so yay!

Of course, success meant she was practically teleporting around the battlefield on the world's strongest mechanical bull! And something she couldn't see was desperately slicing off her left claw, which really, really hurt! She grabbed around for things to crush with the right claw until she found something vaguely arm shaped, and squeezed.

"Oh thank god," Ruby breathed out, one arm reaching through the hole on Aizen's back and clinging to his chest for dear life, the other claw slicing into Aizen's now-mangled wrist as his zanpakuto fell to the ground.

"You know, I am beginning to really hate you," Aizen told Ruby with the tiniest of smiles as Starrk teleported in with god-like speed, both guns aimed point-blank at the Hogyoku, and fired

As the gem shattered into two, Aizen's zanpakuto dissolved upon the winds.


	3. Chapter 3

When the blast ended and the dust settled, Aizen lay before the two arrancar, not as the monster they saw before, but as a man. The jewel was still embedded in his chest, but it was as shards across his torso instead of a sphere above his heart.

"Is he dead?" Ruby asked.

Then Aizen's body suddenly burst into 3 intersecting cross things, prompting Ruby and Starrk to enter into battle stances.

"Settle down, settle down," Urahara shouted from above.

"Hat guy!" Ruby replied cheerfully. "What are you doing up there?"

"Trying not to get crushed by the big guy!" Urahara replied. "You think you could turn it down on the reiatsu?"

Ruby glanced at Starrk, saying, "Go ahead, he's cool."

With a shrug, Starrk undid his release, his guns unforming from his hands and a girl taking their place. Ruby gasped, "Lilynette?"

"Yep!"

"But, what, how?" Ruby blabbered.

"I'm his zanpakuto," Lilynette replied.

Ruby stared at Lilynette in thought, before finally saying, "Okay!"

"Just okay? Nothing else to say?"

"Well..." Ruby replied, looking between Urahara flying down to them, the giant trio of crosses covering Aizen, and Starrk's gut wound. "It makes about as much sense as everything else here."

Lilynette shrugged, "You have a point..."

"Hey," Urahara said, patting the crosses, "You mind if I take this off your hands?"

Ruby, Starrk, and Lilynette looked between each other, Starrk and Ruby shrugging. Lilynette wound up being the one to speak, "Why?"

Urahara adjusted his hat, "I want to bring his body to soul society if he's dead, and lock him up for a good ten thousand years if his little soul gem actually did make him immortal."

Ruby replied, "We smashed it!"

Urahara smirked, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's destroyed, you get me? The Hogyoku is a pain in the ass, even now it's probably trying to fix itself."

"Um..." Ruby said, as a shinigami teleported between them. Hey, they knew that guy!

Lilynette spoke up first. "Hi Ichigo!"

"Lilynette?" Ichigo asked. "You here to destroy Karakura town too?"

Ruby blinked at that. Then she looked around, before becoming teary-eyed, Oh god, they destroyed Karakura town and now everyone is dead and it's all their fault and-

"No, we're done," Starrk said, glancing towards the shinigami. Crap, with his reiatsu down the shinigami could start fighting again. Then he turned to the panicked Ruby. "You realize this isn't Karakura town, right?"

"What?" Ruby asked, through quickly forming panicked tears.

Starrk continued, "The shinigami made a fake Karakura town for us."

"They can do that?" Ruby sniffed.

"They did that," Starrk replied.

"That's kind of hard-" Ruby began.

Ichigo butted in, glancing at the oddly familiar 6-foot-tall cloaked skeleton wolf "No, Soul Society really can and did do that, and it really is a load of bull crap-" suddenly, Ichigo realize what was so familiar about the wolf. "Wait a second, you're Ruby! How is that your ressureccion? And what are you even doing here if you aren't fighting?"

"You missed the party by about 2 minutes," Urahara answered for Ruby with his ever-present smirk. "The fighting's over, Aizen's locked up right here!" Urahara then patted the cross-thing next to him, adding, "And all that's left is for everyone to-"

A mountain of ice clashes with a slash of water over the ruins of the town. Within a second of that happening, the still-bleeding captain commander was flash-stepped between Aizen and Starrk by a guy with a dog head. Yamamoto releases the dog-header soul reaper, and the two shinigami enter a ready stance, to which Lilynette and Starrk reply in kind. Both sides were ready to errupt into violence at a moment's notice.

"No!" Ruby shouts, grabbing Lilynette's blade out of her hand and tying her white cloak to it.

"Ruby, give me that back!" Lilynette begins to protest, as Ruby raised her makeshift flag into the air.

"Truce!" Ruby shouts, frantically waving "Parlay, cease-fire, everyone stop trying to kill each other! Aizen's dead! He's selfish and he betrayed me and Starrk and now he's dead! We don't have to fight each other anymore!"

The two new shinigami look at the trio in silence, before Urahara pipes in, "Got his corpse right here. Careful with it, no knowing what the hogyoku will do given too much time."

The two shinigami look at each other, with the dog-headed one speaking first. "Do you really want to keep fighting these guys?"

The older one sagged his shoulders and turned his head back to the three arrancar, saying, "We will allow you half an hour to pull out," another ice explosion bursts into the sky, "And deliver the cease fire order."

Starrk nodded, then flared his reiatsu for half a second. It wasn't the heart-stopping oppressiveness of his fight against Yamamoto and Aizen, but it was enough to get everyone's attention for miles.

The explosions of water and ice in the distance stopped, and the tres espada, Tier Harribel, and some short kid with white hair teleported to the impromptu meeting.

"What was that-" Harribel began asking Starrk as the short guy took a ready stance on the shinigami's said.

"Aizen's dead, we're pulling out," Starrk answered, knowing it wouldn't be the last time today he was going to need to say that. Eh, that was what delegation was for. He glanced over to Ruby; The girl, still in resurreccion and holding the stabbed, burnt, blood-covered hoodie she passed for a white flag, had somehow managed to fall asleep. Great. Now it was up to just him and Lilynette to try to organize a cease fire. Didn't Ruby realize he was terrible at Ruby's whole 'niceness' thing?

Harribel was warping back and forth to drop off half-conscious fraccions from who-knows-where in the Arrancar camp. Meanwhile shinigami captains began converging on their location, carrying hopefully just passed-out-and-not-dead lieutenants that he was probably responsible for, the coherent on both sides demanding an endless string of answers. Starrk just knew the next half hour was going to be a real drag.

VVVVVV

Of Aizen's invasion force, segundo espada Baraggan and his fraccions were annihilated. Meanwhile, tres espada Tier Harribel prioritized getting her fraccions out of Starrk's aura, so she still had her Tres Bestias fraccions. And Gin Ichimaru was still alive, though in that case the much bigger surprise was that he ended up staying with them. It made a twisted kind of sense, the shinigami would have almost certainly executed him if he didn't stick with the arrancar, but still...

With half the espada dead and Aizen's... corpse? body? in Soul society's hands, it was time to pick the new head of the espada. So, every remaining Espada; Starrk, Grimmjow, and Tier; plus the one soul reaper of Los Noches were brought into the former meeting room of the espada, a room that looked ready to collapse at any moment, for the most important announcement Starrk would ever have to make.

"Not it," Starrk said, as if that explained everything.

Grimmjow spoke first, "Go on...?"

"I am not leading you guys. I'm not any good at it. So. Which of you are going to lead us."

"You're going to trust another soul reaper with your lives?" Gin asked sarcastically. "Seems kind of dumb to me."

"Not him," Grimmjow immediately said. "Seriously, why is he here?"

"Because none of us have any idea how to run a fortress city," Starrk replied. "Baraggan was the only one of us who knew how to run a court, but as you all know he's dead. Leaving Gin as the only person who knows how to handle all that operational stuff we ignore."

Grimmjow answered back, "Come on, do we really need a pencil pusher?"

"Would you like to try your hand at rebuiling Las Noches," Gin said, wearing his ever insufferable smile. "Go on, tell me how you found hollows to work on the construction. Maybe show us how you kept our pantries stocked. Oh wait, that was my job while you were busy drawing every shinigami in soul society to Karakura."

Grimmjow glared back, "Oh now you're just asking for a beat-"

"Gin. Grimmjow." Harribel stated, the words coming out not as a command for silence, but a promise of immense pain if the two didn't behave.

"And that," Starrk said, "Is why I'm nominating Harribel to lead us."

Staring down the two strongest surviving espada, neither Grimmjow nor Gin chose to voice any objections, as Harribel said, "I'll do it." Harribel then paused, before adding "I expect you three to respect my command."

"Tough girl," Gin said. "And what'll you do if Starrk here flips you the bird?"

"Gin," Starrk said.

Harribel gave Gin a dangerous look, before Grimmjow added his own two cents, "Harribel, you aren't going to be an asshole and get us all killed fighting soul society?"

"Of course not. What's the point of having subordinates if you don't care at least a little for them?"

Grimmjow and Starrk looked at each other, Starrk nodding to him before adding, "I'm in."

Grimmjow went second, "Eh, easier than living in the wilds again and more than I got from Aizen, I'm in too."

Gin looked to the other 3, shrugged, and said, "Not like I have anything better to do."

VVVVVV

It had taken 3 weeks for Ruby to wake up.

It took another week for her to do something that gave the rest of the arrancar pause.

"What kind of funky hollows are these," the sole soul reaper of Hueco Mundo, Gin, asked the girl. It was Ruby's turn to fill up the lower dungeons with food, and instead of hollows they wound up with cages bursting full of black, masked animals lacking the distinctive hollow holes Gin had come to expect.

"They're not really Hollows. They're Grimm. They're from Remnant."

Gin paused. "You mean that place Lilynette always corrects you about? The world from your dreams?"

"Yeah, that one," Ruby said.

Gin appraises Ruby, before throwing out a demand, "Take me there."

Ruby shrugged, creating a descorrer rip in the room. She peeked inside, then turned back to warn Gin, "Now remember, they aren't very strong but they will try to bite you." Then she headed through the portal.

Shrugging, Gin followed the girl to a clearing in a red forest under a shattered moon, noting the giant black mass of masked wolves at the other end of the clearing charging them. Ruby ripped out her scythe, dispatched 6 of the 7 in an instant, then lifted the struggling 7th over her head, which she proceeded to carry back as it weakly scratched at her cloak.

"Ruby," Gin asked. "What is this place?"

"Remnant!" Ruby answered, carrying the wolf back to the descorrer.

"And why don't any of the other arrancar know about Remnant?" Gin replied.

"Lilynette knows," Ruby answered back, "Although for some reason she prefers to go to Karakura town. Like she thinks Remnant isn't cool or something." Ruby then passed through the descorrer with her catch, Gin following behind.

"It's just, you are really understating the whole world filled with happy meals thing if you ask me," Gin said. "You know, I've never heard of this place and I was a shinigami captain for 50 years, right? It's totally off the soul society radar."

"Oh, there's other things there too, you know, besides Grimm," Ruby added. "Like hunters, who's job is to kill the Grimm. And kingdoms, and a whole lot of people. I'm learning how to be a hunter myself."

"So let me get this straight," Gin continued. "There is an entire world. One the Soul Society has never even heard of. Filled with arrancar happy meals. That they pay people to kill."

"Huh," Ruby said, dumping the beowulf into an empty cage. "Maybe we should go there more often?"

"You think?" Gin replied.

VVVVVV

 **Beginning of Arc 2**

VVVVVV

Ruby addressed the group, starting with, "Remember, be on your best behavior everyone! Absolutely no killing or maiming of flaring you Reiatsu or any of that stuff, except on Grimm." She hoped the 3 of them could behave, Lilynette was controllable but Gin and Harribel could both be kind of big unknowns...

"Yeah, yeah, we get it," Lilynette said, taking Starrk's place for this trip.

"Great!" Ruby said, ripping open a descorrer. "Let's go!"

VVVVVV

Yang was the last to enter the team RWBY room that night. She liked going out on the town every once an a while, and that saturday was no exception. So quietly getting changed and lying herself in bed, she was in for the shock of her life when the air pealed itself open to a grey, slightly luminescent void.

"Guys?" She called out, waking everyone awake but Ruby.

"Buh? What is it Yang...?" Weiss started, before getting her first glimpse of the portal. That snapped the girl awake, shouting "Wait, what is it? Yang?"

Blake was the most collected of the 3, already having retrieve her weapon, her Gambol's Shroud. "Weapons up," she said.

Yang nodded to her teammate, and Weiss dug around for her sword, as a sinister looking cloaked figure wearing a wolf's skull emerged from the portal, lit from behind by the eerie grey light.

"Hi guys!" the figure said in Ruby's voice, completely ruining the menacing aura of the room as it proceeded to turn the lights on. Then she shouted throught the portal, "Hey, Gin, Harribel, Lilynette, you guys coming along?"

3 more people followed her out, a little girl who was almost naked, a huge blonde woman that made Yang feel self conscious, and a tall, white haired dude that all 3 girls instinctively wanted to punch the smug off of. After the man passed through, the portal closed behind them, giving Yang a clear view of the Ruby in the white cloak, and the Ruby sleeping in her bed.

"Ruby?" Yang asked, dumbfounded.

"Yep, that's me!" Ruby said. She then did a double take when her eyes laid on her sleeping form. "So this is what an out-of-body experience feels like," she mumbled, before continuing, "Right! introductions! The girl is Lilynette, she's my oldest friend, the blonde is my boss, her name is Harribel, and Gin is the creepy looking guy that we aren't really sure why we keep around."

"Touched," Gin said, hand over heart.

Ruby then turned to the dead people in the room, and explained, "The blonde one is my sister, Yang, the one with white hair is my partner, Weiss, and the one with black hair is Yang's partner, Blake," Ruby explained as Blake gave them a very slow wave, gun still in hand, "and and together we make team RWBY!"

Harribel looked between Ruby the arrancar, then Ruby the little girl. She decided to file that away for later as she became the first to speak. "Why did you take us here?"

Ruby replied instantly, "Because you wanted to see Remnant."

Harribel gave Ruby a look, before elaborating, "No, I mean, why this particular spot."

"I wanted you to meet my team!" Ruby explained, as if it were obvious.

"In the middle of the night?" Harribel continued.

"Well, yeah, that's the only time I'm awake!" Ruby said.

And everyone was giving her that look again. The dumbfounded one Lilynette always gaves her right before complaining about whatever Ruby was doing.

"It made sense in my head..." Ruby muttered.

"Sis," Yang began. "Are these those guys from Huego Mundo-"

"Hueco Mundo," Ruby corrected.

"-Hueco Mundo you've told me about?"

"Some of them!" Ruby replied, grabbing her scroll

The room lapsed into that awkward silence again, before Weiss took charge.

"So..." Weiss began. "What brings you to Remnant?"

"Grimm hunting!" Ruby beamed, before waving her scroll in front of Lilynette. "Looks like there's a whole bunch of Goliaths just north of Mountain Glenn."

"Ruby," Lilynette replied, "We have no idea where that is."

"Right, right, give me a minute to figure out how to set up the connection," Ruby started yammering as she tore open another one of those grey portals. "You guys wait here, k?"

"Wait, Ruby," Lilynette started, as the portal shut behind the hyperactive red-head.

The blond arrancar plus soul reaper loomed in the middle of the room.

Lilynette was never good at looming.

"Lilynette turned to Yang. "You her sister?"

"Yep," Yang said, her brain having given up on trying to understand what was going on and putting her mouth into auto-pilot.

"Your sister do things like this often?"

"No," Yang replied, "Not often," the room lapsing into awkward silence again.

Harribel and Gin were both really good at making people feel uncomfortable, in completely different ways. With the former it was due to her collar hiding half her face and making her look so dour. The latter didn't have that excuse, Yang couldn't tell with him if the unease she was getting was because he wanted her to feel that way, or because he really was sizing her up before stabbing her in the back. Or both. Both was an option.

"I like your top?" Yang told the taller blonde. "Really helps with the intimidating stranger aura."

"Good," Harribel replied.

Yang didn't have answer for that.

Then Ruby burst back into the room with another hole in reality. "Found it!" she said, "You guys will love it, it's this abandoned city thing with giant herds of goliaths! Come on!" She said, disappearing back into the portal.

Harribel stared at the portal. Then, she nodded to Yang, and followed creepy masked Ruby in with Gin going through right after her.

Lillynette looked straight at Weiss, and said, "Next time I'll try to get her to make the portal outside your room, k?"

Weiss looked over Lilynette again, saying "I was doing a pretty good job convincing myself we never met. Until, you know, that."

Lillynette laughed in response. "See ya, dusty girl!" she said, the portal closing behind her.

The 3 members of the team stared, with Blake being the first to speak. "Shouldn't we wake Ruby and talk about...?" the girl trailed off, not quite having words for what happened.

"No," Yang said instantly.

Blake continued with a delayed, "Okay..." She then turned to Weiss. "Dusty girl? Where did that come from?"

Blake was hit with the full force of Weiss's patented "I'm not talking about it" frown. No one was as good at looking annoyed as a Schnee, she gave Weiss that.

VVVVVV

The Grimm were slow, weak, and endless.

Their killers were fast, strong, and mildly annoyed.

"These things are really dumb," Gin said, slicing yet another bird Grimm out of the air by extending his zanpakuto a hundred feet. Ruby wished she had a sword that could extend like that too, it would make killing Nevermore so much easier, as well as any other avian Grimm. Gin went on, "Why aren't these Grimm of yours giving up? It's obvious they can't win."

"That's just not something Grimm do," Ruby said, kicking her 30th or something beowulf into the descorrer to Hueco Mundo she left open. At the rate they were going, Hueco Mundo would eat for weeks on tonight's spoils. Sadly, the Goliathes were too big to take back, so they were forced to settle for the small fry.

"If they didn't dissolve, they'd be the perfect prey," Harribel added, grabbing two more beowulves by the mask and tossing them back to Hueco Mundo. "You know how much easier my life would have been if weak hollows endlessly threw themselves upon by sword like this?" Her attention was then drawn to their 4th member.

"Yee-haw!" Lilynette said, riding on the back of the odd Ursa as she sliced limbs off the enemy's ranks. the beast was trying it's hardest to throw her off, while she applied crushing force to the thing in her attempts to stay on. At the rate Lilynette was accidentally going, the bear would be dead without her even having to stab it.

"Well at least one of us is having fun," Gin said.

"Aw, don't be like that," Ruby said, checking the portal. 3rd cell is almost full now, time to move the portal to the ceiling of a 4th. Summoning a new descorrer to replace the old one, she told Gin, "Think of it as a teambuilding exercise?"

"Yeah, yeah, would you give it a rest already?"

"Is this about, you know, Tosen and Aizen?" Ruby asked. "I didn't know them all that well, but I knew Yammy and Ulquiorra..." Ruby looked down a bit mournfully, which would have worked a lot better if she didn't slice off a beowulf's foreleg in the same motion. She went on, "Even so, them not being here is just all the more reason why we need to pull together-"

"No," Gin replied. "It's your whole attitude thing. How are you so upbeat all the time? You live in a desert full of things that want to kill you, constantly having to murder just to eat, with a ragtag band of misfits that barely tolerate you." Another slash, another dead bird monster. "How can you be so happy about that?"

"You're kind of exaggerating, I mean, they're just hollows," Ruby said.

"Yes, you know, ghosts?"

"Vengeful ghosts. That us arrancar need to band together to protect ourselves from," Ruby said, another Grimm thrown into her void hole.

Gin missed his shot hearing that, needing to take another swing to take down the next Nevermore. "Ruby. You do realize you're a type hollow, right?"

"I can't be. I'm not vengeful or angry or anything," Ruby said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Gin looked at Ruby with one of his rare frowns. "Ruby, arrancar are hollows that have removed part of their masks."

"Really?" Ruby said, thinking back as she casually backhanded a beowulf "Wait, then I was a hollow when Aizen found me? Shouldn't I have been all angry and murdery then like the hollows everyone else talks about?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Gin said. "Look, you're missing the big picture here; hollows are people too. Just, a lot of them are really angry, hungry, murderous people that want to eat you. Hell, most arrancar still think of themselves as hollows, like your boss here."

"True," Harribel said, having idly listened into the conversation. It's not like beating these things down took all that much of her attention.

"Huh," Ruby said. She took down another beowulf using a strike with the back of her scyth, don't want to kill them until it's time to eat! "Then maybe we should stop eating them?"

"Both Arrancar and Hollows need to eat souls," Harribel said. Then remembering that these things supposedly didn't have souls, she added "Spiritual energy. Which usually comes from souls."

"Then," Ruby thought, "Maybe I should stick to Grimm?"

"Maybe," Gin replied, two more birds dead, as he and Ruby put a hold on their conversation.

Five beowulves later, Ruby finally answered back, "Well, all the people I ate were really bad at least, right?"

"Ahaha, no," Gin said.

Ruby stared at Gin, "But, they were evil killer ghosts!"

"Most of them were good people that simply stayed in the living world too long and turned into that," Gin answered. "Would have been fine if a soul reaper got to them, that's what soul reapers do, purify souls and harvest them back to soul society. And once a decade, you'll find a genuinely good hollow; we call those 'the crazy ones'." As he slashed another bird out of the air, he added, "You'd definitely count as one of the crazy ones."

Ruby had no idea what to say to that.


	4. Chapter 4

Maybe Remnant was pretty cool, Lilynette thought to herself as she rode her death bear through hoards of werewolves.

Dozens upon dozens of monsters were following her through the streets of the abandoned city, the wolves easily outspeeding her bear but just giving her more opportunities to be the most badass calvary woman that ever lived, slicing any and every Grimm that got close to her mount as the ground rumbled beneath her feet.

Then the road gave way under the weight of a hundred Grimm, and she and her pursuers found themselves falling into the depths of the city, into a great cavern. The cave was a city in its own right, with buildings, vehicles, and dozens of arrancar. But none of them had their holes showing? Were these some Remnan equivalent?

In an instant, the underground city had erupted into anarchy, the arrancar all shooting into the mass of death and destruction as Lilynette carved a path out of the way. Thousands of bullets traveled through the air between arrancar dodging for cover and desperately trying to avoid being overrun by the surprise incursion.

Lilynette was like a whirlwind through the center of the chaos, slicing Grimm after Grimm as they came pouring through the hole in the cavern's ceiling. Jumping back from the tidal wave of Grimm, Lilynette crouched down and charged cero after cero, the arrancar around her forming a silent alliance in the name of stopping the invasion, as a cane-weilding man in a bowler hat joined with a pink-and-brown haired girl of Lilynette's height to stop the monsters.

"Yo, helmet head," the man said, firing off an explosive round from the end of his cane. "What brings a girl like you to a place like this?"

"Grimm hunting," Lilynette replied. "Sorry about your base, Ruby didn't mention that Remnant had arrancar or anything."

"Ruby? as in Rose? Big scythe, red hair, about your height."

"Yep! You one of her friends?" Lilynette asked, blasting away another two beowulves.

"You could say we've been acquainted," the man in the hat replied. He lifted his cane, set his sights on Lilynette, and fired.

VVVVVV

Lilynette... was in pain.

"We've got company. You, start the train. The rest of you, kill anyone who tries to get in."

"But we're not ready yet!"

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear, if that train isn't loaded in the next minute I'm going to have a new pelt for my collection, now get moving!"

Lilynette... was in a lot of pain.

She was bleeding, her left arm wasn't working right.

She didn't know what these guys could even have to hit her that hard. But it hurt. A lot.

Well, if these guys wanted to be assholes.

Lilynette surged back to her feet, zanpakuto in hand, and began slashing like mad at the caned man, who was barely abled to deflect her blows. The man only lived because he was more experienced than her, always a step backwards from her strikes, until finally his image shattered... and was replaced by a little girl with an umbrella?

Lilynette would have been very happy if Aizen's were the last hypnosis abilities she ever had to come across, but nope, shooting monsters in the middle of nowhere she had to come across the second instance of that power she had ever seen. She blamed Ruby. Ruby picked the place, it's Ruby's fault they entered a hive of asshole arrancar.

Hang out in the middle of a desert, get recruited by an asshole. Take them to the middle of nowhere, find a whole hive of assholes. Either the world was a really flatulent place or Ruby needed to seriously start stocking up on good luck charms.

And she still hadn't actually hit this mute umbrella weilding asshole!

Slicing Lilynette's thigh with the tip of her umbrella, the umbrella girl gracefully god-damn cartwheeled out of her horizontal slash, and Lilynette decided to screw this girl. She let loose her reiatsu and began charging ceros. The girl stumbled under Lilynette's aura, which was a lot less effective than Lilynette was hoping that would be, but enough to allow the girl to stumble under Lilynette's giant death laser. Hah! Screw you umbrella girl! Not so smug now!

And then the city in front of Lilynette was crushed under thousands of tons of rock and Lilynette began questioning the wisdom of letting loose giant death lasers underground.

Lilynette dodged boulders the size of cars and between waves of beowulves and arrancar as she rushed back to the exit she made earlier, as more and more of the cavern collapsed. She then parcoured up one of the underground structures of the city before leaping out through the hole she and all those beowulves just made. Zipping down the street as the street collapsed behind her, she turned around to see building after building being swallowed by the earth. It was beautiful in its own way, and the best part is that it was happening to assholes!

Then she noticed the cloaked figure in her peripheral vision. "Hi Ruby!"

"What happened here?" Ruby asked.

"Just some arrancar being assholes," Lilynette said, as yet another building collapsed into dust.

"Ah," Ruby said, pondering. "Remnant doesn't have arrancar."

"Well, they were all wearing masks," Lilynette said. "Say, you know any red-headed asshole sporting the cane and bowler hat?"

"Roman Torchwick. He's a bad guy that steals lots of dust. Why?"

Another rumble beneath the earth rocks the street, as Lilynette explains, "I don't think you'll have to worry about him anymore."

"Well that's good," Ruby yawns, staring at the destruction. "Why's that?"

"I'm pretty sure I just killed him."

"Lilynette..."

"He nearly shot my arm off, alright!" Lilynette answered. Huh, she was still bleeding, she'd have to get that looked at back at Las Noches.

"Yeah, you're bleeding pretty bad," Ruby said. "We're pretty much done here anyway, everyone else already went home.

Another rumble, another building into the chasm as Ruby ripped open one of her holes in reality.

"Lilynette," Ruby asked, glancing back at the destruction. "Are we bad people?"

"Of course not," Lilynette replied immediately.

"But we eat hollows," Ruby said.

"Well, yeah."

"And they're people."

Lilynette wasn't entirely sure where Ruby was going with this, but, "I guess. If you squint."

"And you just killed a whole bunch more people," Ruby said.

"How do they count? They shot me!" Lilynette replied as a streetlight fell over. People who shoot at her were the enemy, and the enemy doesn't count as people. Come on Ruby, these are like, the basics of combat.

Ruby looked at Lilynette. "Nevermind," she said, letting out another yawn, as she ushered Lilynette through the portal.

VVVVVV

Ruby was the last member of her team to wake up. "Good morning..." she greeted the room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Huh, why were they all looking at her like that. Usually she only sees that expression on Lilynette, and she's a dream ghost thing!

She checked her clock. 5:30 on a Sunday? "You guys are up really early. What's the occasion?" And wow all 3 of them looked ready to pass out on the spot, Weiss especially.

"Nothing!" Yang replied before Weiss and Blake could speak. "Um, sis, what do you remember about last night...?"

"Did I sleep through something important?" Ruby asked, headed to the bathroom. Gotta get ready for the day!

"Not really..." Yang said, as Ruby closed the door behind her.

"Come on, just talk to her," Weiss whispered over the sound of running water. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."

"I don't want to push her," Yang replied.

"Yang," Weiss continued. "We can't pretend she didn't teleport 2 scary as hell hunters and a barely dressed little girl into here."

"Maybe that wasn't Ruby?" Yang whispered back.

"Maybe that wasn't-" Weiss shouted, cutting herself off with a glance to the bathroom door. She whispered, "Yang, listen to yourself."

Yang turned to Blake, who was reading one of her books, like always. "Blake, back me up her."

"I agree with Weiss," Blake said, never taking her eyes off her book. "She's your sister, you need to talk to her about this stuff at some point, right?

"Traitor," Yang said, earning a shrug from Blake.

Yang thought around in circles about how to approach last night with Ruby. Then, the bathroom door opened, Ruby dressed in full uniform and drying her hair. Showtime.

"So Ruby," Yang began, "How did you sleep last night?"

"Pretty well..." Ruby replied with a pause. "You ever have one of those dreams that makes you all introspective and stuff, but you can't quite remember why?"

"Uh... no," Yang said.

"Hm..." Ruby said, taking out her scythe. Swish. Swish. Yang and Weiss stared at each other, Weiss motioning for her to go on.

"...What are you doing?" Yang asked, after the third swish.

"One sec," Ruby said. Then she ducked low, held her scythe behind her, and sliced the air as if the air itself were yet another creature of Grimm.

And with that, the creepy grey hell portal opened back up.

"Neat," Ruby said, sticking her head into the hole in reality.

Yang gawked. It wasn't as bad as the first time, but she still gawked. "Rubes, what is that thing?"

"It's called Descorrer," Ruby replied. "It lets me make portals to places. But don't use this one, my aim was a little off. I was aiming for the cafeteria, wound up in the sewers."

"Cool, cool," Yang said, as Ruby shut the portal. Her brain had enough things to think through without adding that to the list. "So Ruby, your dream friends, where do they come from?"

"Hm...?" Ruby thought back. Oh yeah, she dreamed about being here last night with Lilynette and the others. "They're from Las Noches, it's in Hueco Mundo." She then swished her Scythe another couple times until a new portal opened up. She stuck her head in the new portal, and muttered, "Huh, so that works too."

"How did you meet them?" Yang asked.

"Well, originally it was just me, Lilynette, and Starrk, but then we were recuited by this Aizen guy and we met a bunch more people," Ruby replied. "You want to see them?"

"Can we?" Yang asked. "Just, you know, meet them?"

"Sure, the portal's right here," Ruby said, jumping into the portal. "We could hang out, compare weapons, kill some Grimm. Come on, it'll be fun!"

VVVVVV

"Hey Lilynette!"

"Gah!" Lilynette said, looking behind her. Red-hooded Ruby and her team had just passed through one of Ruby's descorrers, while white-hooded Ruby slept on a beanbag chair in the corner. "Um... hi Ruby?"

"So guys, this is Lilynette," Ruby began, as her sister exited the portal next, followed by Weiss and Blake.

"We... met," Yang said.

"You met?" Ruby said. "And you never told me?"

"No, no, it was just last night," Yang explained. "Around midnight, in our dorm room?"

Ruby let out a huff, "You should have woke me up."

"Ruby, you did the introductions," Lilynette said.

"I did?" Ruby asked.

"Yes!" Yang and Lilynette said in unison.

"...So last night really happened? I took a bunch of guys to our room and then we went off to Mountain Glenn to catch Grimm? That was all real?"

"Yes...?" Lilynette said "What, you didn't know?"

Ruby had the decency to look sheepish, "It's always super hard to tell with dream stuff, you know? Because some of it is actual dreams and some of it happens, but I'm not sure how much of it happens... You know what I mean?"

"No," Weiss said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Okay, well," Ruby started, trying to explain, "Lilynette's obviously real because she's here. But I also dreamed that Lilynette killed Roman Torchwick and a whole bunch of arrancar and then the two of us went to the human world for ice cream, and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have just killed like, a ton of people in a city she's never been to before."

Ruby continued, "So, yeah, it's kind of hard to tell which parts of the dreams are real, you know?"

"Yeah, Ruby, we didn't go out for ice cream," Lilynette said.

"See what I mean? Like, that whole thing was a dream, but a lot of it felt real too, so it gets confusing."

"I did kill a bunch of arrancar though."

"What?" Ruby shouted.

"We've been over this! They shot me!" Lilynette said in her in defense.

Ruby pouted, "That still doesn't make it okay-"

"Arrancar?" Blake asked.

"Yeah, you know, people with holes and half masks."

"Wait, so, what, Torchwick was leading a whole bunch of people like Ruby," Blake replied, trying to process what the girl was saying. "And you met them at Mountain Glenn... and you killed them?"

"Well, people like my Ruby," Lilynette said, pointing to the white cloaked figure sleeping among the beanbag chairs. "Your Ruby doesn't have a mask, But yeah, I dropped a city block on like, four, five dozen of them," the girl finished, brimming with pride.

Blake raised her finger and made to respond, before stopping herself. Which left her gaping at Lilynette, just like the rest of the team.

"Anyway, I'm showing them around Las Noches," Ruby said, breaking the pause.

"Nice," Lilynette replied. "This their first time in Hueco Mundo?"

"Yep!" Ruby said.

"Well then," Lilynette finished with a mischevious gleam, "Welcome to the afterlife!"

VVVVVV

"Welcome to the afterlife!" Lilynette said.

"What?" Yang replied.

"Yeah, you know, the afterlife," Lilynette said, "The place where everyone's ghosts go where they die. Well, the evil ghosts at least, supposedly there's a place for the good ghosts called soul society-"

"Wait, so this is hell?" Yang stuttered.

"No, no, that's somewhere else. Think of this as purgatory," Lilynette explained. "Oh, and everyone wants to eat you."

"What?!" Yang shouted.

"That... doesn't include you, right?" Blake said.

"Of course not, I already ate!" Lilynette said.

Weiss replied, "That really isn't all that comforting..."

"Don't worry team," Ruby said "Las Noches is the capital fortress-city thing of Hueco Mundo, where all the strong arrancar live so they don't have to deal with all the cannibalism hollows do. Arrancars usually don't eat humans or other arrancars, so everything'll be fine, we'll just need to stay near Las Noches!"

And... Ruby's team was giving her the look again.

"Ruby..." Blake said. "Are we dead?"

"No, no, of course not," Ruby said.

But Blake wasn't finished, "Ruby, are you dead?"

"Nope!" Ruby cheerfully replied.

"Yes," Lilynette added.

Ruby turned to Lilynette, "I can't be dead, I'm right here."

Lilynette answered back with a gesture to white-cloak Ruby, "Your body is 10 feet behind me with a hole through its heart. Seems pretty dead to me."

"But, I'm breathing, aren't I?" Ruby asked.

"Well, yeah," Lilynette said, "But I'm breathing too, and I'm dead."

Ruby turned to her sister, "Yang, tell her I'm not dead."

Yang looked between the two. Right, supportive big sister mode time, even if she had no idea what was going on, "Ruby isn't dead. She'd have to have died for that, right?"

Lilynette looked at the two girls, before giving in, "I suppose..."

Weiss cut into their argument, having finally regained her wits. "Haha, very funny Lilynette, no really, where are we."

"Las Noches," Ruby said.

"And where is that in Remnant?" Weiss asked.

"It's not," Ruby said, opening another portal and motioning for the other 4 girls to go through.

"What do you mean it's not in Remnant?" Weiss asked, as Ruby dragged her in by the arm.

Then the two passed through Ruby's portal, landing upon the roof of a gigantic fortress that oversaw an endless white desert, underneath a starless black sky.

But that wasn't what had Weiss's attention.

The shattered moon of Remnant was gone, and in it's place, a bright crescent lit up the night.

VVVVVV

"Ruby, are you sure we're not dead?" Yang asked, staring at the unshattered moon alongside Blake.

"Uh..." Ruby said.

Lilynette piped in, "It would make sense. Why else would you be in Hueco Mundo?"

Ruby told her team, "You aren't any more dead than you were when we left...?"

Lilynette added, "You're thinking Remnant is full of dead people?"

Ruby nodded, "Yeah, I mean, everyone we met there can see you right? Seeing ghosts is supposed to be rare or something in the human world."

"No!" Weiss said. "We are not all dead. We were fine just a minute ago, and being in hell doesn't make us dead and everything is fine and can we please maybe leave hell before a demon eats us?"

"Purgatory," Lilynette corrects.

"Can we please leave Purgatory then, before a demon eats us."

"I guess..." Ruby said. "You sure you don't want to see Hueco Mundo?"

"Yes!" Weiss said, at the same time Lilynette cut in.

"You know," Lilynette said, "We'd know if your team was dead if we went to the human world. We'd just need to check if anyone can see you guys."

"You have a point," Ruby said.

Blake noted Ruby and Lilynette using that term again, 'human world'. "What do you mean, the human world?" Blake asked, surverying the landscape. Unlike Yang and Weiss, she was too busy being fascinated to have an internal crisis. This was a whole new world with a whole new moon, an eerie, beautiful land no one in Remnant had ever seen. She continued, "How's it different from Remnant?"

"Because it's not Remnant," Ruby said.

"Yeah, the Human world has a moon just like this one, and lots of shops and towns and stuff," Lilynette said, "It's kind of like the cool version of Remnant, except without giant deathbears to ride into battle or armies of werewolves, so maybe they're about the same level of cool."

"Wait, you mean it doesn't have Grimm?" Blake said.

"Nope!" Ruby replied.

"Kind of wish it did, last night alone we caught enough of your Grimm things to eat for a month," Lilynette said.

"Wait, what?" Weiss asked, breathing deeply and trying to avoid a panic attack. "You eat Grimm?"

"Well, yeah, what else would we do with them?"

With two questions popping into mind for every question either Lilynette or Ruby answered, Blake decided to screw it. Let the heiress have per panic attack and let Yang gawk like a fish, she was just gonna come along for the ride and not think too hard about it. Blake took out her scroll cam, gotta get a picture of their faces for later. Come to think of it, she should get a picture of all of this for later. Not every day your best friend takes you to the cannibal ghost afterlife oh god how is that a thing.

Weiss said, "Look, Ruby, this was all very nice and is making me question everything I ever thought I knew, but I would really like to go back home now... Please?" Oh wow, Weiss was about to have a breakdown, wasn't she. And Yang's still standing there, gaping like a fish.

"Ruby," Blake said, "Maybe you should take Weiss home, maybe Yang too, I think this is all a little overwhelming for them."

"What about you, Blake?" Weiss said. "How aren't you freaking out?"

"Well, you see..." Looking to Ruby, Blake replied, "You know this place better than any of us. If you say it's safe, it's safe." Blake the gave Weiss a smirk, adding "I've always wondered how Alice must have felt when she traveled through Wonderland."

VVVVVV

"And this is the interior of Las Noches!" Ruby explained, from atop one of the many of the towers within the gigantic complex.

"The sky..." Blake says, looking at the blue sky and the fluffy clouds above.

"Yep, Las Noches simulates the sky of the human world," Lilynette said proudly. "I have no idea why," she added, "But it makes for a nice change of pace."

It was impossible to tell they were indoors from her, as both the ceiling looked just like the daytime sky and the walls looked just like an endless desert. Had Ruby not taken Blake to the roof, she would have never known they were inside the complex.

She squinted her eyes. Was that dustcloud - people? It looked like a little girl was being chased by a trio of monsters.

"Ruby," Blake started.

"I see them," Ruby answered.

"No, wait-" Lilynette began, but the two of them were already through a portal.

And like that, standing between a little girl and the 3 monster's chasing her, Ruby shouted, "Stop fiends!"

"Ahh, Shinigami, please don't hurt them!" The little girl started screaming, as the 2 of the 3 monsters started panicking. "We were just playing tag!"

"But, but, you were crying," Ruby said.

The little girl explained "Oh, that's just because it's no fun unless Nel starts crying," Nel paused in though. "It's because Nel is a masochist."

Blake and Ruby stared the little girl. Then they stared at the two monsters.

The monster with the giant face spoke, "Yeah, it's not like there's anything better to do."

"Why did you teach her that word?" Ruby asked.

"Uh..."

Lilynette was the last through the portal, piping in, "Yeah, these guys are crazy. They do stuff like this all the time."

"Are you two new?" Nel asked, "Nel's never seen you two before!"

Lilynette started by turning to Ruby. "Yeah, this is Nel and her fraccions," Lilynette said.

"Wait, that little girl is an espada?" Ruby asked.

"Was. She's still pretty scary," Lilynette explained. "Nel, meet Ruby, Starrk's fraccion, and Blake, Ruby's friend."

"Oh," Nel said. "You're the girl that spends all day sleeping with Starrk!"

"Um, not like that..."

"So tell Nel," Nel said, "Is he any good in bed?" As Ruby started stammering out a response, Blake had to admit she had never seen Ruby get this flustered before.

Saving Ruby from having to answer that question, Lilynette cut in, "Go have fun playing tag or something, we have places to go. Now. Ruby. Portal."

Nel continued, "Starrk must be good, otherwise Ruby wouldn't spend so much time sleeping with him, right?" Wow, Nel had to be doing this on purpose, Blake was having a lot of trouble holding in her laughter.

"No, it's just regular sleeping! Nothing is going on between us! We don't even sleep in the same room!" Ruby tried to explain. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, if you deny it that strongly it just makes them more sure. Course, Blake wasn't completely sure Ruby even understood the mechanics yet, but if she did it was probably because her father used a lot of weaponry metaphors.

Nel looked contemplatively at Ruby, "But big brother Donny said that when a man and a woman live together..."

"Oh, look at the time," Ruby said, ripping open another descorrer. "Sorry Nel, would love to talk, but I have to do this thing, at that place," She then looked at the 3 monsters plus little girl, before jumping into the portal with the world's fastest, "Bye!"

VVVVVV

A garganta opened within Urahara's shop, immediately putting the man on edge as a red-cloaked reaper emerged from the portal into the grey abyss.

The hood of the reaper raised to look at the man, exuding menace and misfortune for any who crossed it's path.

Then the reaper opened it's mouth and said, "Hi hat guy!"

And with that the effect was instantly ruined.

"Ruby?" Urahara said.

"The one and only!" Ruby answered back, as Lilynette and a new, black-haired girl with a bow entered the shop after her.

"Ruby, what are you doing back here!" the man answered jovially. "I almost didn't recognize you without the mask! You know this is gonna piss Ichigo off something fierce."

"Yeah, well, my Remnan friend wanted to see the human world." Ruby then dramatically gestured behind her, "Speaking of which, meet Blake, she's my teammate in fighting monsters and stuff."

"Yo," Blake said with a wave.

"Well, welcome to Urahara shop, home for all your soul reaper needs," Urahara said. Huh, Blake didn't have a visible mask or hole either. Maybe she was hiding her mask fragment under the bow? Urahara continued "I'm Kisuke Urahara, always glad to help a lovely lady out."

"How's Aizen?" Lilynette asked.

"Not quite dead, but Soul Society stuck in a dark pit for the next twenty thousand years or so," Urahara replied. And good riddance. "I imagine you guys won't see him again."

"Who's Aizen?" Blake asked.

Lilynette replied, "Well, the short answer is he's a dick."

Ruby continued, "He created Las Noches and assembled all the arrancar together, but then he threw them all away to aquire power."

"Yeah, he formed a team of ten arrancar called the espada," Lilynette explained. "They were the best of the best. But then he sacrificed half of them in a war so he could fuse with a magic gem and get ultimate power."

Urahara chipped in, "He also got me kicked out of Soul Society and killed thousands of soul reapers."

"Soul Reapers?" Blake asked.

"Shinigami. Professional ghost hunters," Lilynette answered. "So, yeah, Aizen's a dick, but we got a fortress city out of it!"

Blake nodded, as Urahara continued, "Speaking of which, how's Las Noches doing? You guys still together after Aizen, you know?"

"Yep!" Ruby said.

Huh. Urahara noted having that many powerful arrancar in one place, still organized, could pose a real threat to soul society as a whole. Something for later, he supposed. "So what brings you here?" Urahara asked.

Ruby answered, "Well, Blake's never been to the human world, and I had a few extra lien so I thought maybe we could introduce her to the locals and get some ice cream."

Lien? A new currency the arrancar made? He couldn't imagine any poor ice cream man taking that. Urahara grinned, but added an implied threat to send a chill down Blake's spine as he said, "Remember, no eating the locals."

"Oh, no, she's not from Hueco Mundo," Ruby answered back. "She's from Remnant. No ghost eating there!"

"Never heard of that place," Urahara said. Was it a part of Hueco Mundo?

"Well, it's like the human world," Lilynette said, "But with tons of delicious bloodthirsty monsters!"

"You mean like hollows?" Urahara asked. Urahara appraised the new girl, walking behind the counter to subtly activate a couple quick scans using the shop cameras. Huh, so Blake is human? Her bow's showing up hotter than expected though, ears? Wait, Ruby's human too? That can't be right. He'd have to check his equipment later.

"Well, kinda," Ruby said.

"Mind showing me some time?"

"I don't see why not-" Ruby began as Lilynette cut her off.

"No." Lilynette said.

"No?" Ruby asked.

"Harribel wants to keep Remnant stuff in house," Lilynette explained. Harribel? The Tres espada? Why wasn't Starrk the leader? More questions for later.

"Aw, that's too bad," Urahara said. "Any way I could change her mind?"

"You'd have to talk to her," Lilynette said, turning to Urahara "We are looking for a science guy, but Harribel's doesn't really trust any shinigami, you know, after Aizen."

"A science guy?" Blake asked.

"Oh yeah, we had the best science guy, before he was killed by the soul reapers." Lilynette explained. "His name was Szayelaporro Granz, and he really helped Starrk with his incontinence!"

That earned stares from Urahara, Ruby, and Blake, before Lilynette realized what she said. "His reiatsu incontinence!" she corrected. Blake continued staring. "You know, his problems holding his spiritual pressure in and not killing everyone! With his spiritual pressure!"

"And spiritual pressure is...?" Blake asked.

Lilynette flared her pressure, making Blake stumble as Urahara braced himself, half expecting the demonstration.

"That," Lilynette said. "That feeling I just induced in you? That was me letting out my reiatsu. Starrk couldn't keep that in."

"Phrasing," Urahara said.

"Anyway, if you're ever stuck over here, talk to this guy," Ruby said. "He's like, their wise old mentor guy, and also won't try to stab you."

"Does that happen often?" Blake asked.

"Yes!" Lilynette and Ruby said in unison. Lilynette continued, "If you see anyone in black poofy clothes with a sword, run."

"Now Lilynette," Urahara said, "That's hardly fair, not all us soul reapers just murder everyone on sight."

"Just all of them except for this guy," Lilynette said. "And Gin."

"Gin?" Blake asked. "The really creepy guy from last night?"

"Las Noche's resident Soul Reaper and official expert on all things involving Soul Society," Ruby explained.

"Professional creepy guy that had nothing better to do," Lilynette continued.

"Well, glad you guys are doing well for yourselves," Urahara said. "Now are you here to buy something or are you just window shopping?"

Lilynette looked at Urahara, "I dunno, what kinds of things do arrancar buy?"

"Ice cream?" Ruby asked.

"Clothes?" Lilynette added.

The man let out a knowing grin, "Let me give you the tour..."


	5. Chapter 5

"Let's start with our most popular products, gigai and soul candy," Urahara started.

"What are those?" Ruby asked.

"Oh, you two are in for a treat," Urahara said, handing Blake a Pez dispenser, "Try some! This one is Chappy."

"Um, so, I guess they're really good candy?" Blake asked.

"You could say that," Urahara said, as Blake popped a piece of the candy into her mouth and woah.

Why did she have a chain in her chest?

Why was that chain attached to her body 5 feet away?

Why was her body aggressively cuddling Ruby and going on about how cute Ruby was?

"Wha-" Blake began, as Urahara cut in.

"Soul candy," Urahara explained. "It implants an artificial soul into your body so your soul can go do soul reaper stuff."

"Wait, does that mean I'm dead?" Blake asked.

"No, not at all," Urahara explained. "It just means your soul is no longer in your body. Completely different."

Yet another reason to never accept candy from strangers. As Lilynette and Ruby tried to pull Blake's body off of Ruby, Blake asked, "Great, now how do we undo it?"

"Woah, woah, aren't you curious at all about your brand new superpowers?" Urahara replied. "You just became a superhero. I here that's all the rage among kids these days. Invisibility, flight, whatever you want within about 100 feet of your body."

Blake appraised the man. "I can still go back, right? This isn't permament?"

Urahara smirked, "As long as your body doesn't die and you don't break the chain, you can go back, no problem. Just walk right into yourself and you're golden."

"And if the chain breaks?" Blake asked.

Urahara replied, "The chain is stronger than your body. You're more likely to die because your body is crushed while you're outside of it than because the chain breaks. But if you do manage to break the chain... you can't go back to your body anymore," Then in an instant Urahara dispelled the malice with a shrug, adding, "Probably. I wouldn't test it if I were you."

"Please change her back!" Lilynette said, holding Blake's real body in a full nelson as it continued chattering happily away. Yeah, this was getting really out of hand.

"Just let the body go," Urahara said, "Her name's Chappy and she's probably already over Ruby, she's the super chatty one with the flighty personality." As 'Chappy' wiggled out of Lilynette's grip, the personality in Blake's body started yammering away to no one in particular about various knickknacks around the shop. Urahara looked at Blake and added, "Yeah soul candy comes in a bunch of different personalities instead of flavors."

Blake had thought she seen everything today. But seeing herself run around as the most hyperactive motormouth she had ever seen just blew all the rest of the day's revelations out of the water.

Like, she could accept that Ruby was a spooky ghost person in a city of other spooky ghost people defending themselves against cannibal ghosts.

She could accept that she saw purgatory today.

But watching herself yak yak yakking to no one in particular about nothing in particular?

That was the part she was having trouble coming to terms with.

"You coming?" Urahara asked, snapping Blake out of her thoughts.

"You gotta see this training room! It's huge!" Ruby shouted from down the ladder Urahara was ushering them down.

Right. She agreed to descend this rabbit hole no matter how far it went.

Although she started to question her life choices when she realized it went straight down a ladder into the basement of the free candy man mom always warned her about.

VVVVVV

Half an hour later, during which Urahara neglected to tell Lilynette that Gigai, artificial bodies, don't generate clothes the first time you enter them, and do in fact template themselves into an anatomically correct replica of the person using it, Blake was finally getting the hang of flying.

Really, it was more walking on air by focusing her aura to her feet, although Urahara used the term 'spirit particles'. Weird that Urahara had an entire underground desert cavern for training that kind of thing, but at this point it was just par for the course.

15 minutes after that Lilynette declared her boredom, and Ruby suggested they check out some other stuff.

And now Blake was staring at her own body. Her own, hyperactive, peppy, annoyingly chatty body.

"Are you sure you don't want a Gigai?" Urahara asked, "Could be useful for human world stuff."

"Yes! I'm sure!" Lilynette said, as Blake got ready to re-enter her body. Which still hadn't stopped talking somehow.

She just kind of walked into it.

And then with a cough, the candy was hacked up into her hand, and she was herself again.

No fancy special effects or light show. Just a step and and a cough, and she was herself.

Huh.

"Don't throw the candy away, it's reusable," Urahara said, tossing her the bunny dispenser that went with it. He then turned back to Ruby. "Anyway, seeing as you don't have any soul society currency," Urahara went on as Blake worked the kinks out of her neck. She really didn't need to. She just felt it was the thing to do when you re-enter your body after half an hour of flying about. And wasn't that a weird thing to think about.

"Hey Blake, did you bring any ammo?" Ruby asked.

Blake looked at the girl. "Why?"

"Because Urahara's willing to trade. Our dust for that soul candy stuff."

"Ruby, we don't need-" Blake caught herself. From a pragmatic standpoint, that was a pretty good deal. A couple rounds of ammo for instant invisibility and flight was nothing to scoff at.

Even if it came with certain... undesirable side effects.

"Here," Blake said, handing Ruby a couple rounds, and getting a colorful variety of additional pez dispensers in return. She added, "Be careful with those, they're explosive."

Urahara smirked in reply. "Pleasure doing business with you girls!" the man said.

As the trio was leaving, Blake looked back. The man was already emptying the dust out of one of the rounds onto his counter.

VVVVVV

A massive amount of negative spiritual pressure had just left Urahara's shop, and Ichigo was already running. He wasn't sure what the man was thinking, but whatever was going on couldn't be allowed to rampage around town. Thankfully, the hollow hadn't broken anything yet, but it was only a matter of time until casualties started piling up.

As Ichigo rounded the corner, he found the source of the spiritual pressure and...

"Hi Ichigo!" Ruby said.

Great. These two again. And they brought a friend.

Ichigo grunted, "Hello Ruby, Lilynette, ...other arrancar. What are you doing here?"

"Oh, she's not an arrancar." Ruby explained. "She's Blake, and right now the two of us are 100% alive! Blake, meet Ichigo, he shouts a lot, but he's also a cool guy. He's a soul reaper too!"

"Sup," Blake said, quickly taking out her phone and snapping Ichigo's picture.

"You can't just hang around here," Ichigo explained, as she noted Blake continued messing with her phone. Yeah, good luck with that, soul reapers are invisible.

"Why not?" Ruby asked.

Ichigo looked at Ruby and said, "Because we can't just have hollows running around town."

"I'll have you know I'm an arrancar," Ruby replied.

"Same thing."

Ruby blinked twice at Ichigo, before saying, "Now that's just racist."

Ichigo started yelling, "You are literally a hollow with the mask removed."

Ruby answered, "Still rude. You don't see me calling you a baby soul reaper."

Ichigo brought his palm to his forehead, he had enough of this crap. With an exacerbated groan, he asked, "Why are you here?"

"We're getting ice cream. Or, well, we're trying to, but the vendor isn't taking our money," Lilynette explained.

Ruby added, "Yeah even though the languages are the same, apparently Remnan money doesn't work."

Ichigo sighed. "Well, yeah, they can't see or hear you, duh."

"No, me and Blake have bodies right now," Ruby said. "The not ghost kind."

Ichigo glanced over Ruby's shoulder. Oh wow that ice cream man is freaked. Which means he can definitely see them. Having two heavily armed customers talking to the air would do that to a person.

"Come on Ruby, why don't we just take his stuff?" Lilynette said. "He's weaker than us, it'll be easy."

Ruby explained, "It wouldn't be right."

Wow this situation was about to get stupid and violent fast. Come on Ichigo, let's try talking the psychotic little girl down. "Listen, Lilynette, just because you're stronger than someone doesn't mean you can take there stuff."

Lilynette pouted, "Why not?"

"Because then they wouldn't be able to maintain their business in the first place," Blake answered, "And no one would have ice cream."

Lilynette sighed, "This is one of those economics things Gin keep prattling on about, isn't it?"

"Yep!" Ruby answered.

"Alright, fine, we won't steal it from him," Lilynette said. "We'll try it your way."

Ruby added, "Well, I kinda don't have a way, since we don't have any human world money or anything..." As Ruby said that, Ichigo noticed the cop car pulling up. Did the ice cream man...? Yes, aparently the man did call the cops on a couple of girls. Girls with guns. Who were both talking to people who weren't there. That... really didn't come as a surprise to Ichigo.

"Listen, you should get out of here before you're arrested," Ichigo said.

"What, why?" Ruby asked. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Well, not really, it's just-" Ichigo started, as the officer approached.

"Hello girls," the cop said.

"Hi officer!" Ruby replied cheerfully.

The officer looked Ruby and Blake over, saying, "Now, I've been getting calls of a disturbance, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Oh, sure, no problem," Ruby said sheepishly. She then whipped out her scythe like a lightning bolt, opening a garganta in the middle of the sidewalk as the cop started fumbling in panic for his stun-gun. She then casually walked through the portal as the cop just gaped. Ichigo wasn't sure what that guy was seeing right now, but he couldn't imagine a near-death experience with a disappearing little girl could be good for his heart.

"Come on guys," Ruby said, sticking her head back out through the portal.

"Head!" the cop said. "Where's the rest of you?"

Ruby blinked at the cop, answering, "It's part of my semblance," as if that somehow explained anything. Then she told Lilynette and Blake, "Since we couldn't get ice cream here, I created the portal in Remnant instead!"

"Sure, that'll work," Lilynette shrugged, making follow after Ruby.

"Oh, but you'll need to wear this," Ruby explained, handing Lilynette her cloak.

"Why?" Lilynette asked. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"It's not considered decent in Remnant," Ruby answered. No kidding, Ichigo thought. Hueco Mundo was literally the only place on Earth a 12 year old girl could get away with an open vest. Except it wasn't even on Earth, so the metaphor kind of broke down.

...Unless she was 12 hundred. Ichigo shook his head, he was not going to think about the lack of clothes on possibly ancient little girls.

Lilynette answered Ruby by grabbing the cloak, saying, "Bunch of prudes..."

The two girls waved to Ichico. "See ya Ichigo!" Ruby called out, before disappearing into the garganta.

"Don't get eaten!" Lilynette added as she passed through next.

Blake looked at the cop, who was paralyzed in shock. She then looked at Ichigo. "Yeah, Ruby can be a handful sometimes-"

"Just go," Ichigo said. Nodding, the girl walked halfway into the garganta, then stopped. She took out her phone, snapped of photo of the cop and his car, and went through. A moment later the portal closed.

"I miss when all the hollows were evil," Ichigo sighed.

VVVVVV

Blake was pretty sure Vale wasn't being invaded by Grimm this morning.

So coming through Ruby's portal to see a dozen beowulves staring her down was a bit of a surprise.

And with that, Vale's Grimm sirens began wailing.

Lilynette was already charging the Grimm, like a hurricane of blood and vicera, as Ruby opened up a portal and yanked Blake through, to face the center of the destruction about 200 feet down the street.

The cliffs of Vale had been breached, a train rammed straight through the mountainside from the old tunnels. Hundreds of Grimm were pouring into the city, and at the center of it all stood Roman Torchwick alongside a handful of White fang, all of which looked battered, beaten, but very much alive.

"Red?" Torchwick began. Then the dying screeches of Grimm caught his ear as he saw Lilynette fast approaching. With more fury then Blake even knew the man was capable, he stared at Lilynette and said, "You..."

"Hey asshole," Lilynette cheerfully replied. "You're alive!"

As more Grimm barreled out from behind Torchwick and the train he rammed through the mountainside, the man shot a grenade into Lilynette's face, which she dodged by hurling a Beowulf between the grenade and herself. Torchwick yelled "shoot the girl!" as Lilynette grabbed hold of another beowulf and blocked all the shots the White Fang could hurl at her with the wolf's body. It was the first time Blake had ever felt sorry for a Beowulf, and once Lilynette was in the midst of the terrorists she hurled its body at the remaining White Fang, knocking 3 of them over. Then she started deflecting Torchwicks cane as he tried to fire shot after shot at the girl, heedless of the damage to himself.

"This is for Neo!" Torchwick shouted, as he took a grenade out of his pocket and pulled the pin.

"Who's Neo?" Lilynette replied.

"My partner!" he shouted back, as he neatly chucked the grenade into Lilynette's hood. Only the girl's fast reaction times were able to get it out of the borrowed cloak as Roman used the opening to beat the girl over the head with his cane. But within a second Lilynette was deflecting his cane with her sword. In spite of the man's rage, his attempts to desperately try to fend off the girl's sword strikes were faltering as she wailed on him over and over. Finally growing bored of Torchwick's resistance, Lilynette grabbed his cane, fired it directly at the mask of the Beowulf that was about to pounce her, then tossed the weapon away. She then grabbed Torchwick by the neck and hurled him right back through the train he came in on as she shrugged off a half dozen bullets to the back from the White Fang members too stupid to run.

"That hurt," she said with a glance behind her, otherwise not reacting at all to having been filled with lead.

That was the moment the remaining White Fang decided survival was the better part of valor, and the moment Blake decided then and there to never be on that girl's bad side. But she couldn't afford to focus on the girl anymore as a King Taijitu decided she and Ruby looked delicious. She barely dodged out of the way of its first strike, which let her stick Gambol Shroud directly into the black head's eye while Ruby got her scythe underneath the white head and began slicing.

It was at this moment that Blake noticed the all-encompassing green light. With a glance in Lilynette's direction, she noticed the girl charging up a green orb in front of her head, which then became an all-enveloping laser that went straight through the train and into the tunnel it came from, slamming into the oncoming Grimm and melting them. Well then. If that didn't kill Torchwick, nothing would.

As Blake sliced out the other eye of the two-headed snake's black head, she wondered if she should feel something sentimental about watching the man die in front of her. Then she looked around. If Torchwick really was responsible for Grimm running rampant through Vale, well, she could save her charitable thoughts for when they were dealt with. Blake then went for the kill, and impaled Gambol's shroud through the snake's black forehead, as Ruby just finished slicing off its white head.

The snake dead, all that was left was to deal with the Breach itself. And the dozens of surviving Beowulves.

Yeah. Sure. Easy.

VVVVVV

All things considered, the Breach of Vale could have gone a lot worse. The Beacon teams came in only a few minutes after Lilynette started firing her... ceros down the Breach tunnels, and the last of the Grimm were killed off within half an hour.

The questions about Lilynette, however, lasted quite a bit longer.

Which led to Blake, Ruby, and Lilynette all sitting in Ozpin's front office, waiting for him to finish up, as Lilynette happily, finally, inhaled a cone of vanilla ice cream. Mostly to bribe her into not going off on her own, like she was planning to do, and like literally no one at Beacon could stop her from doing.

Soon after Lilynette finished her cone, Ozpin finally called them in. Ruby took the center seat, with Lilynette, still in Ruby's cloak, taking the left and Blake taking the right.

"Hello Miss Rose, Miss Belladonna. I am glad to see you are making new friends. May I ask her name?"

"Lilynette. Lilynette Gingerbuck," the girl said proudly.

"Miss Gingerbuck," Ozpin said serenely, before addressing all of them. "You know, you did a great thing today. And I am proud to have students fighting on the front line of the war against the Grimm." He then looked at Lilynette, "I just have a few simple questions about which school you come from."

"Well, the thing is-" Ruby began.

"None of them!" Lilynette said proudly. "I'm from Las Noches of Hueco Mundo!"

"Oh, and where is that?" Ozpin asked.

Ruby started stammering, "Well, strictly speaking, it's not really-"

"You know he's not going to get it until he sees the moon of Las Noches, right?" Lilynette cuts in. "Like when you showed me Remnant for the first time and the moon was all shattered, or when we took your team to Las Noches."

"Uh, are you sure?" Ruby asked. "I mean, you were the one that said Harribel wanted to keep this stuff in house..."

"Yeah, from the soul reapers. He's not a soul reaper, is he?"

"Well..." Ruby shrugged. "I don't think so?"

"He's the important guy in charge of everything, right?"

"Well, yeah-" Ruby stuttered out.

Lilynette barreled through the conversation, "Then he's the kind of guy our boss wants to meet, right?"

"Harribel didn't say anything about meeting anyone-"

Lilynette continued, "Well, not yet, but if we're gonna work in Remnant our bosses are going to meet eventually, right? This will just speed things up."

"Shouldn't we see if this is all okay with Harribel before we start telling him everything?"

"I suppose..." Lilynette said.

"I see..." Ozpin said. "So this Harribel person is..."

"Tier Harribel! She's our boss!" Lilynette said proudly. "And one of the strongest arrancar around!"

"And what is an arrancar?" Ozpin asked slowly.

"You're kidding, right?" Lilynette asked. "You were just invaded by like 20 of them earlier today. You know, those masked guys with the holes in their chests."

"Those are just people," Ruby corrected.

"Really?" Lilynette asked. "Oh. Weird they'd be wearing masks then."

Ruby explained, "Well they're bad people so they don't want to be recognizable."

"Oh," Lilynette said. "Well, anyway, arrancar are former hollows that had part of their masks removed. Our boss leads a whole fortress of them so we don't have to worry about being eaten by vengeful hollows." Lilynette then puffed out her chest and pridefully announced, "She's not the strongest arrancar though, that title belongs to Coyote Starrk, the strongest soul in Hueco Mundo."

"I... see..." Ozpin said.

"She's not wrong," Ruby added, as Blake shifted in her chair, looking slightly uncomfortable.

Ozpin decided then and there that pressing them on the matter... might not be entirely useful. "Well, if Miss Harribel ever feels like stopping by, my door is always open."

"I'll let her know," Lilynette said, getting up from her chair. "Come on Ruby!"

"But Ozpin's not finished with us!" Ruby said, following after Lilynette.

"No, that's quite alright Miss Rose, you two have been most helpful," Ozpin called after them, as the door shut behind them.

And then it was just him and Blake. "Miss Belladonna," Ozpin said. "You've been pretty quiet. Anything to add."

Blake looked Ozpin straight in the eye, "They aren't crazy."

"I never said they were," Ozpin replied.

Ozpin stared at Blake, and Blake stared at Ozpin, neither of them saying anything. It was Blake who broke down first, saying, "It's their story to tell."

"But they did tell you," Ozpin stated.

"Yes."

"And you believed them," Ozpin added.

Blake replied, "They showed me."

"I see," Ozpin said, reaching for his mug. He sipped his coffee slowly, then move to speak. "And everything Miss Rose and Miss Gingerbuck just said...?"

Blake looked down from Ozpin, steeled her resolve, then raised her head and looked the headmaster straight in the eyes. "All true."

Ozpin looked at her contemplatively as he leaned back in his chair. "Very well, Miss Belladonna. Please continue to look after Miss Rose, and have a pleasant evening."

VVVVVV

End Arc 2

VVVVVV

A grey portal opened into Ozpin's office, and a white-cloaked girl with a wolf-skull mask stuck her head out of it.

"Hey Professor Ozpin," Ruby said sheepishly. "Uh, so my boss is here, and she wants to meet you, uh, now."

Ozpin was very glad he was not holding coffee this time. And that he only stalled two seconds before responding to Ruby. "Hello Miss Rose," Ozpin said, "While I can't say I was expecting it, now is as good a time as any." He then checked that yes the cameras in his office were recording.

"Um, yeah, one sec," she said, sticking her head back through the portal, giving Ozpin his first good look at it. The interior of the portal was smoky and glowed with an eerie grey light, up until Ruby re-emerged with a blonde woman who cut an imposing figure, that impression only further enhanced by her high collar. She showed a lot of midriff typical of Vacuo, although the style was reminiscent of the colorless period.

"Right, so Tier Harribel, Professor Ozpin," Ruby said.

"I understand you are the leader of Vale," Harribel said.

"Well, not precisely, although I do hold a seat on the Council," Ozpin replied.

"He also leads Beacon academy, which is where we train all our hunters," Ruby explained.

The woman appraised Ozpin from head to toe before speaking. "That will do," Harribel said. "Ruby, leave us."

Ruby nodded, but her voice wavered as she said, "Don't do anything drastic, okay?"

"I am not Grimmjow. I can behave myself," Harribel commanded, as Ruby took one last look back, then left through the portal.

"Welcome to Beacon academy," Ozpin said, acting like this was all normal. Obviously it wasn't, but Miss Harribel didn't need to see that. "And as Miss Rose explained, I am the headmaster here. What brings you to Beacon Miss Harribel?"

Harribel stared Ozpin down for a moment, the expression felt like it belonged on a shark deciding whether or not to bite. Of course, Ozpin knew he couldn't back down or she would be all over him, but he still hadn't felt half that intimidated in decades. She then said, "My arrancar will be handling a number of Grimm clearing operations around Remnant. Ruby will act as my liason. She will receive any contracts you believe would be of interest to Las Noches."

"Ah, and what precisely is Las Noches, Miss Harribel?" Ozpin asked.

Harribel paused, before answering, "Las Noches is my castle, my city, and my kingdom."

"Then, that would make you Queen of Las Noches? Would you prefer I call you by your title?" Ozpin said. Appeasing her ego seemed the way to go.

"My title is King of Hueco Mundo," Harribel answered, "But for this, Miss Harribel will do."

"As you wish, Miss Harribel," Ozpin said. "Is that all?"

Harribel's piercing gaze felt like it was burrowing into Ozpin and she replied, "Where are all the souls?"

Ozpin blinked, before returning to a neutral expression, "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I have yet to see a single spirit in Remnant, and Ruby assures me that the closest thing you have are Grimm," Harribel said. "Where do all the souls go?"

Ozpin replied, "I'm afraid I don't know." The woman didn't seem to be talking about religion here, it was like she genuinely believed that the lack of ghosts in Remnant was unnatural.

Harribel dissected Ozpin under her gaze, as Ozpin kept his face as neutral as possible, before the woman finally said, "I would like to pass some of the research stored in Las Noches to your expert on the soul. They may help both of us understand why Remnant has no unbound souls. I expect your scientist to share his findings with Las Noches."

"So you want to find out why there are no ghosts?" Ozpin asked. "Isn't that more in the realm of myth rather than science?"

Harribel laughed. She then added, "You question an arrancar as to whether ghosts are real?"

Ozpin blinked. "I'm afraid I don't understand the humor," he stated plainly.

Harribel looked the man straight in the eyes, her eyes still crinkled in mirth, as she explained, "I am the king of ghosts, creating a kingdom of ghosts. That you would question my existence, to my face, is precisely why I would speak with your expert on the soul."


	6. Chapter 6

As Ruby's teammates dreamed of their upcoming fights in the Vytal tournament, Ruby's dreams were of a different nature.

For at the gate of Las Noches stood 3 shinigami.

"The scary clown is Mayuri Kurotsuchi, captain of the R&D division," Gin explained, gesturing to the monitors in the room. "The woman with him is Lieutenant Nemu Kurotsuchi, also R&D. And the spiky haired guy is Kenpachi Zaraki, captain of the direct-combat division."

"What do you think they want?" Ruby asked, monitoring the situation with Grimmjow.

"Well, Mayuri is probably here for research, and Kenpachi's here for a fight," Gin explained. "I doubt this was authorized. If it was, we'd have all the captains at the gate, and not just the two."

"Either way, any shinigami barging into Las Noches is just asking to die," Grimmjow said with a shrug. "I'm gonna go kill them."

"What?" Ruby said. "No! We can't just kill them!"

"You really think diplomacy is going to work here, little girl?" Grimmjow asked.

"If you want to stop them, you better act fast," Gin added, the monitors showing that Kenpachi had just knocked the front gate over.

Wow, this was spiraling out of control. Ruby leaped out of the room, sonidoing to the three soul reapers with just a few quick steps.

And then realizing she didn't particularly want to be staring down 3 soul reapers.

"Um, hi guys?" Ruby asked.

"Aw come on," Kenpachi said. "You mean to tell me the best you guys could send out is a little girl? Weren't you the girl that got thrown away while I was fighting your Cero Espada?"

"Um, yeah," Ruby stammered, "Well, we were kind of hoping you would just... go away? Please?"

As Kenpachi lunged forewards, Ruby barely dodged under his strike, before desperately shouting out "Awaken" to go werewolf on the man with her release.

"Well, now I know you're taking me seriously," Kenpachi said, as Ruby desperately blocked the man's blade with one hand and slashed his chest with the other. But the slash just bounced off the man.

"Really?" Kenpachi asked, looking down to where he was hit. Then he put down his sword. "Hit me with your best shot."

"Uh, I'd really rather not," Ruby said.

"This isn't charity. This is to see if you're worth my time. Now do it before I decide to just strike you down."

Deciding she didn't want to be struck down, Ruby desperately lunged at the man, stabbing him with her claw as hard as she could, only to be stopped completely on the man's skin. "Can you really not get through my reiatsu, even after your little resurreccion?"

"Uh..." Ruby said, quickly moving from a claw strike to a grab on the man's neck. With that, she was able to slice at least a little bit into the man's skin with her crushing grip, to which the man smiled like a maniac.

And watching the man she was choking grin like a lunatic now replaced captain psychoclown for the most disturbing thing she saw today.

"Maybe you won't be completely boring," Kenpachi stated, throwing Ruby off with a swing of his arm. "Try not to die too-"

"You get your jollies throwing around little girls?" Grimmjow interrupted, having finally caught up to Ruby. He then proceeded to cut into Kenpachi, slashing him harder without his resurreccion then Ruby was capable of even after her own, as he barreled past the man and out the front gates. "Mind if we take it outside? Harribel will kill me if we have to repair the wall."

"Mayuri, the girl's all yours," Kenpachi said with a wicked smirk, as the two battlenuts left to beat the crap out of each other. Which left Ruby staring down mister psycho clown.

"Uh, hi?" Ruby said.

"What is the name I should put on your jar?" Mayuri asked.

"That is... really creepy? But you can call me Ruby," Ruby said. "Um, so, it would be really nice if you could leave."

The clown stared at Ruby, making the girl increasingly uncomfortable.

"Please?" Ruby said.

The man slowly walked up to her, until he loomed over her. Well, not over, since she was a big tall werewolf thing, but he was definitely looming. He then took out a test tube, and broke it across her chest.

"What are you doing?" Ruby asked.

"It seems the doseage isn't the same for all arrancar," the clown said.

"Wuh?" Ruby replied.

"I'll need to adjust it later," the clown continued muttering to himself, as Ruby noticed her eyes getting heavy. Why was she falling asleep? She just got up! Wait...

"Did you try... to poison me?" Ruby said, as the ground rumbled under the blows of Kenpachi and Grimmjow.

The clown just kept muttering to himself.

Shrugging, Ruby zipped in and picked the man up over her shoulder

"Unhand me," The clown said, jabbing Ruby with a needle that bounced off her hide. "The specimen does not get to handle the scientist."

But Ruby was already sonidoing away with the man, the pair traveling nearly fifty miles from Las Noches in under a minute, as the man tried at least 3 more test tubes on Ruby before taking out his sword. "Um, please don't try to poison any more arrancar?" Ruby said, as the man dropped his sword to the ground. And then a giant baby thing appeared and Ruby decided now was a great time to throw the man away and sonido her way back to the fortress.

And... his assistant was still there. At the fortress. Standing by herself. While Grimmjow and Kenpachi were busy giving the desert new craters barely a hundred feet away.

"Uh, I took your boss away," Ruby said.

The assistant stared at her.

"He's over there," Ruby said, pointing way past Kenpachi and Grimmjow.

The assistant stared at her.

Ruby picked up the assistant and Sonido'd her outside the gates. "Uh... see you? Or probably not, because we aren't letting any new shinigami in, sorry."

The assistant continued to stare at her.

Shrugging, Ruby used her sonido all the way back to her quarters. She wasn't sure what that Mayuri guy did, but she really needed to sleep it off.

VVVVVV

"Odds of them coming back?" Harribel asked.

"Mayuri? No idea. Never sure what's running through that guy's head," Gin answered jovially. "But Kenpachi will keep coming back until either we stop being fun or he's dead. Or until the old man puts his foot down."

"You mean their Captain Commander Yamamoto," Harribel said.

"Yep, that's the guy. Probably doesn't even know the two of them took this little trip," Gin smirked.

"And if we killed Kenpachi?" Harribel said.

"Assuming you actually succeed and Kenpachi doesn't destroy Las Noches in the process, that would piss off Soul Society fierce," Gin replied. "50/50 they take all their captains and burn this place to the ground."

"Neither are good outcomes," Harribel said, Gin by her side as they both reviewed the footage of Kenpachi's fight with Grimmjow. As the tape reached its end, they saw Grimmjow nearly bisected, it would be weeks before the man could stand again. On the plus side, Kenpachi was more wounds then skin, but the man was still standing, and Grimmjow was not.

"And if their Captain Commander saw this video?" Harribel asked.

"That would make him put his foot down, if you could get it to him," Gin said. "Though that's a lot easier than it sounds. If a handful of humans could break into Seireitei no problem, I'm confident we could get an arrancar in."

Harribel looked at Gin, "You told me that one of those humans was Ichigo, and he took down two captains while he was there. One of them being Kenpachi."

"They were trying to stop an execution, we just want to deliver a letter. I'm thinking little red riding hood's fast enough to handle them."

"And you think the Captain Commander will be fine with us invading the capital of Soul Society?" Harribel asked, piling on as much sarcasm as she could muster. Which was a lot, she was second only to Gin in that department.

"The old man will lose face and get all huffy," Gin explained, "But at the end of the day no harm no foul. Plus it sends another very important message to them."

Harribel responded, "...You keep your shinigami out of Hueco Mundo-"

"And we keep our arrancar out of Soul Society."

Harribel looked at Gin, but didn't disagree. Instead, she popped the tape out of the player, wrote up a quick letter, and handed both the tape and the letter to the man. "Run it by Starrk. If he doesn't kill you for suggesting using Ruby, you have my approval. Once she wakes up, obviously." The arrancar half of the girl had been asleep for the past 30 hours after all the stuff Mayuri put in her system, and because it was Mayuri who did it, no one wanted to touch her until the man's stuff had run its course.

Not that it was particularly unusual for Ruby's arrancar to sleep for 30 hours straight.

"Gee, thanks," Gin said, taking the tape.

VVVVVV

"Well, well, it's been a few months since anyone tried to pass through the spirit gates without a travel permit," The giant said. "And I don't get many guests these days. So welcome to you, little girl."

"Um, hi?" Ruby said, keeping her hood up. No reason to show off the mask before releasing. "Could you let me through? I have a delivery for Captain Commander Yamamoto," she finished, showing the man her package.

"Just leave it here," the giant said.

"No can do..." Ruby explained. "I have to give it to the Captain Commander directly. You know how it is, orders. Maybe you could, I dunno, call him over?"

"I do not have the authority," the man said, taking out his axe. "But if you insist on seeing him..." The giant of a man cleaved the ground, it was all very impressive, but it was kind of weak compared to the arrancar of Las Noches. The man then commanded Ruby, "Give it all you got!"

"Um, isn't this a bit much?" Ruby replied sheepishly.

"These are the rules by which I live!" the giant answered in return.

Ruby really didn't want to have to fight anyone here... she was the intruder after all.

"Awaken!" Ruby shouted, going werewolf in front of the man, causing the giant to stutter.

"Wha-what are you?" the man shouted, swinging his axe straight into the wolf's boney hide.

"Arrancar," Ruby replied, sonido-ing out of the way of the blow and past the giant. She then casually reached down to lift the gate herself.

"A-arrancar?" the giant asked. "Arrancar!"

"Arrancar." Ruby answered again and wow there were a lot of people waiting for her inside the gate.

"Stop her!" One of the dozens of shinigami waiting inside shouted as his comrades charged her. Another shinigami lunged for some kind of panic button, and sirens started wailing throughout the city.

That would be her cue to run.

VVVVVV

'This will be easy,' Gin said. 'If a handful of humans could do it, an arrancar will have no problem,' Gin said. 'You're pretty fast, you should be able to outrun them,' Gin said.

As Ruby barely outsped the moutain of flower petals chasing her through the city with a barely coherent map indicating she was probably maybe going in the right direction, she decided never to take advice from Gin again.

At least she could sonido further and faster than flower dude could.

And that was the moment that ninja girl showed up. What did Gin say her ability was again?

Oh right, Soifon, death in two steps. Kills you if she can hit the same spot twice. And she had no problems keeping up with Ruby.

As the wave of petals forced Ruby directly into the stinger of insta-death girl, Ruby blocked the girl's strike, to which she responded by twisting her finger to nick the underside of Ruby's claw. Then the girl moved in to hit her arm again, forcing Ruby to throw her abdomen in the way of the needle, and wasn't that a strange way to dodge anything. Ruby grabbed the girl by the wrist as Soifon retracted the blade from Ruby's hide, and broke Soifon's arm, before tossing the girl away.

Sorry Miss Ninja Girl, Ruby did not feel like testing her durability against an instant-death technique while dodging out of the way of a flower-petal blizzard.

And the girl doesn't even flinch at that, switching the arm she was holding her blade with as the petals tried to force Ruby back into charging the ninja. Not this time!

Ruby closed her eyes, covered her face, and rammed herself straight through the death petal blizzard as fast as her legs could take her.

With a glance behind her as she continued fleeing, she noted both of them still hot on her tail. Couldn't they give her half a second to figure out if this was even the right half of Seireitei?

Wait, she saw it! That's the building where Gin told her the Captain Commader does all his Commandering! Ruby sonido'd into the building-

-and found herself surrounded by half a dozen captains, including the old guy.

"Delivery!" she shouted, instantly dispelling her resurreccion and holding her package in front of her.

Everyone, psycho-clown, kenpachi, old-guy, and the newly arriving flower guy and ninja girl, all of them kind of just stared at her. Then Yamamoto finally took her package, reading the letter and unwrapping the tape.

Every captain's hand was on their sword except Yamamoto's. And with a simple hand gesture, half the captains relaxed.

"One moment," their leader said. "You," the captain commander pointed to Ruby, "Don't do anything until I get back. You," the man pointed to the ninja, "Have the 4th division work on your arm. The rest of you, don't kill her unless she tries something."

Then the old guy slowly walked away, as a half-dozen shinigami captains stared her down.

...Awkward.

VVVVVV

"So I'm Ruby," Ruby said to the captains.

"A pleasure," flower petal dude replied dryly.

"I was thinking we could do introductions?" Ruby asked.

"That will not be necessary," Mayuri said, cutting off the other captains. "The specimen doesn't need to know the name of its handlers."

Mayuri then walked right into Ruby's face and said, "You killed my bacteria."

Ruby blinked twice. "Pardon me?"

"You shouldn't be so calm," Mayuri added. "You aren't leaving this room alive."

"Ignore him," a very short shinigami said. "He's just trying to goad you into attacking him so he can get a new specimen for his lab."

"Spoil all my fun, would you?" Mayuri replied to the short one.

"Typically, you're supposed to follow the spirit of an order, not the letter," the short one snarked back.

"Then he should have been more specific," the clown replied.

"But really," the short one added, addressing Ruby. "Why are you here, arrancar?" the captain spit out that last word as if it were a curse.

"To send a message," Ruby answered bluntly.

"And what's the message?" the short one asked.

"Stay out of Hueco Mundo," Ruby said.

The short one huffed. "We aren't in Hueco Mundo," the short one said.

Ruby looked at Kenpachi, who was smirking like a lunatic. She then looked at Mayuri, as unreadable as ever. Neither of them looked at all bothered by what the short captain said as Ruby turned back to the short captain. "Not all your guys got the memo."

"What kind of idiot would go to Hueco Mundo without the Captain Commander's orders," the captain said. Now that earned a twitch from Mayuri.

"Yeah, that would be pretty stupid," Ruby said, another twitch from the clown. "I mean, you'd have to be a real moron to try to assault Las Noches with only 3 guys." Kenpachi let out a laugh with that.

But the clown was not laughing. Mayuri turned to Ruby and said, "When you are on my table, I will make sure the procedures are painful."

"Enough," Yamamoto declared, returning from the back room with his own letter. "This is for your king. Soul Society will conduct no more operations around Las Noches. Mayuri, Kenpachi, is that clear?"

Kenpachi looked disappointed at the news, saying "Whatever you say, old man."

Mayuri scowled, saying "Crystal."

"Good," Yamamoto declared, staring down Ruby with a tone that brokered no disagreement. "You are to return to Hueco Mundo within the hour. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir!" Ruby said instantly.

Yamamoto nodded. "Byakuya, see her to the gates."

VVVVVV

Ruby had some trouble finding Harribel in Las Noches. This was partially because she wasn't, technically speaking, in Hueco Mundo at all.

"What's this?" Ruby asked.

"You like it?" Lilynette said.

"This is our first forward base in Remnant," Harribel added, overseeing construction being carried out by about a half dozen arrancar and hollows specialized for the task. "I accelerated our timetables for working with the Remnans after the Soul Reapers' last incursion. Atlas had a man who was very interested in working with the few arrancar we had that could keep up with Szayelaporro's research.

"Oh, speaking of which," Ruby said, handing Harribel Yamamoto's letter.

Glancing through it, Harribel said, "Good job. Did you run into any difficulties."

"Tons!" Ruby said. "I was nearly stabbed to death by their ninja!"

"The one with the, Gin called it, 'Two-Hit Kill'?"

"That's her!" Ruby replied.

"Well, you won't have to worry about her for a while," Harribel said as she pocketed the letter. She directed two of the arrancar with a gesture, and continued "I would like you to sleep in doctor Polendima's lab tomorrow, then send your human half over to him."

"What for?" Ruby asked.

"He's our soul researcher. Like I said, we accelerated a number of our timetables. You'll find his lab through the first Garganta on the left."

"The giant grey portal thing?" Ruby asked. "Like, a permanent one?"

"One of a number of things he was able to make a breakthrough on," Harribel said. "Not nearly as... efficient or accurate as yours, but very practical for getting to and from Hueco Mundo."

"Neat," Ruby said. "How'd you get everything up and running so fast? Don't these things usually take a while?"

"I showed Atlas's council the video of Kenpachi's battle with Grimmjow," Harribel said. "We both agreed it was in our best interests to have a defense against Soul Society." Harribel huffed. "I should be thanking the Soul Reapers. If they hadn't returned, we would have been arguing diplomacy for years instead of hours. Did you know that none of their Kingdoms even have kings? What kind of Kingdom doesn't have a king?"

"Well, yeah, I live here," Ruby explained. "They used to have kings a long time ago, but over time each of them evolved their own form of representative democracy."

"What's a democracy?" Lilynette asked. The other Hollows glanced at Ruby as well as they worked, pretending not to be interested. Harribel especially; while she didn't show any outward interest, she also stopped giving out commands to the other workers.

Oh boy, where to begin. "Well, a democracy is this thing where all the people vote for who they want to lead them."

"So they vote on which of them is the most powerful?" Lilynette asked. "Wouldn't it be easier for the arrancar to just fight each other then? Why would voting be a good way to determine strength?"

"They aren't voting to see which person is the strongest, they're voting for the person that will best support the things they want," Ruby explained.

"But what happens when one of them is way stronger than the others and kicks the guy everyone voted for out?" Lilynette continued.

"Well, the people follow their leader because they chose their leader, so the leader has a bunch of strong people that are loyal to him." Then Ruby glanced at Harribel. "Or her. Like with Harribel here. Starrk follows Harribel not because she's stronger than him, but because she's better at leading than him."

"But what if someone stronger than the leader decides to just kill the leader?" Lilynette asked.

"Well," Ruby went on to explain to the now near-silent construction yard, "The thing is lots of people like the leader because they voted for him, so lots of strong people defend the weak leader, and the weak leader organizes the strong people so that they're all fed and happy."

"That's just," Lilynette said, looking for words. "That just sounds so unstable to me! The leader could be taken out by any old schmuck with the power to get through his supporters!"

"Yeah, well, humans don't become as strong as espada, so none of the humans really stand out so much that any one of them could pull that off," Ruby said. "Ideally. Admittedly, it's not as stable as Baraggan's reign, but it shouldn't be because humans die after a while, and Baraggan lived for what, thousands of years?"

Lilynette just looked at Ruby, before saying "Humans are really bad at this whole government thing."

"Hey," Ruby defended, "It got us ice cream! You didn't see any ice cream in Hueco Mundo when it was just a strong guy telling everyone what to do!"

Lilynette huffed. "I still say monarchy is the way to go."

VVVVVV

Blake was mortified.

Yesterday, she decided to try out Urahara's invisibility and flight candy on the roof of the Beacon dorms.

It turned out only half of what the man advertised was true.

So today, her picture was on the front page of the Vale Sun. Alongside the headline "Flight of Fancy".

She tried to pass it off as her semblance. She tried. It's just that, the picture of her was so memorable. Everyone remembered the girl hovering, reclined, over Beacon, casually reading a book as a chain lay through her heart.

"Sup Blake," Yang said, a copy of the newspaper in front of her as she munched on her cereal. "I thought you just did doppelgangers. Have you been holding out on us?"

Blake buried her head in her hands as Yang read aloud, "Blake Belladonna, first year Beacon Student, shocks hundreds by displaying a previously unseen version of flight. Researchers baffled about semblance which allows for casual flight. According to one expert who wished to remain anonymous, it is an advanced application of magnesis via the chain on her chest, but others at Vale University assert that the stresses on the chain make that explanation impossible."

Yang put down her paper. "How'd you do it Blake?"

Dropping her hands, Blake said, "Remember when Ruby took us all to Hueco Mundo?"

"Yeah," Yang said, turning serious.

"One of her friends created a candy that lets you have an out-of-body experience. You know, like a ghost," Blake said, tossing Yang a Pez dispenser with a bunny head. "The effect was supposed to let you fly, and make you invisible to ordinary people," Blake added. "Clearly that half of the product's effect was exaggerated."

"No kidding," Yang said, examining the dispenser. "Did anything else happen?"

"Tons. I'll explain it all back in the room," Blake said. "If you really want to know."

Yang grimaced at Blake with a resigned reply, "Honestly, I don't want to know. But she is my little sister." Then her grimace turn into a grin as she added, "Well Blake, hope you enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame!"

Blake groaned in response.


	7. Chapter 7

Ruby wasn't sure what to expect when she entered Doctor Polendina's lab.

But it wasn't several dozen cages of rats, rat ghosts, rat hollows, and rat arrancar.

"Um, Doctor Polendina?" Ruby asked. The man didn't seem to hear her as he injected the rat in front of him with some solution Ruby couldn't name, before putting it in a funny looking cage.

"Doctor? It's Ruby. You wanted to see me?"

The man stared at the cage for 30 seconds, jotted some notes down, then emptied the cage into the waste, the rat inside dead.

Only then did he turn around.

"Hello, girl? What are you doing there?" the man said in complete surprise.

"You asked for me? Ruby?" Ruby said. She looked at the man's desk; among the mess of dust flasks and syringes, was a copy of the Vale Sun displaying the photo of Blake with her chain.

"Ah yes, Ruby, I understand you aren't quite as, er, dead, as your colleagues?"

"Yeah, it's a weird semblance thing," Ruby said. "Or maybe it's a weird arrancar thing? Anyway, I'm here like you asked?"

"Right, right," Polendina said, his very thick glasses obscuring his eyes. "There's a sofa in the corner, go ahead and sleep whenever you're ready, and give me a shout when your... other self gets here?"

"Yeah, she'll be here, I left her a note," Ruby said, as Polendina cleaned out the specialized cage, then lined the bottom with a dust mixture Ruby didn't recognize.

"Um, Doctor, why do you have the article about my teammate on your desk?" Ruby asked.

"Hm?"

"You know, the Blake Belladonna story," Ruby explained. "My teammate."

"I'm trying to recreate the soul splitting effect witnessed over Beacon," the man answered. "I did it in Hueco Mundo, but Remnant has some factors I must be missing."

"It's soul candy," Ruby said. "Blake did that with soul candy."

"Soul candy?" the man asked.

"One sec," Ruby said, tearing open a portal in the lab. A moment later, she came back with a small candy dispenser with the face of a rabbit. "Soul candy. It lets you split your soul from your body temporarily by putting a simple, artificial soul into the body instead. Oh, but don't throw it out when you're done, it's multi-use."

The doctor looked at the dispenser. He took it from Ruby, grabbed a rat, and popped a candy into the rat's mouth.

And then instead of choking on the candy, the rat started gibbering incessantly. Meanwhile the rat's ghost popped out with a tiny little chain attached to its tiny little chest, leading back to it's body.

"Weird," Ruby said, trying to ignore the unending squeaks of language coming from the animal. "Anyway, you can undo it by putting the rat back in it's body."

The man nodded, as he grabbed the rat's, er, ghost, and lowered it back into the rat itself. The candy was regurgitated from the rat's mouth, and the doctor put the candy aside and the rat into its cage. "Do you have any more of this soul candy?"

"I know a guy who sold it to me for dust samples," Ruby said.

"Could I speak with the man who sold you these candies?"

"I'll have to run it by Harribel first, and she'll probably say no," Ruby said. "Do you know anything about soul reapers?"

"You bought it from a soul reaper?" Doctor Polendina asked.

"I bought it from a soul reaper," Ruby confirmed.

The man nodded, before moving for a trunk. When he opened it, Ruby saw it was packed to the brim with every kind of dust imagineable "Buy as much of it as you can, and let King Harribel know I would like to set up a meeting with the man, even if she does end up declining."

"Um, sure," Ruby said. "...King Harribel?"

"Yes, that is her title, is it not?" the doctor asked.

Ruby shrugged, taking a few vials out of the trunk. Looks like she was visiting Urahara again.

VVVVVV

"Hey Ruby," Urahara greeted, as Ruby entered his shop from the front this time. Instead of just opening up a portal in the middle of the store. Polite of her.

"Hey hat guy," Ruby replied.

"Well, what brings you to Karakura town today?" Urahara asked "Was Ichigo not annoyed enough at you last time?"

"Nah, business. I'm here to buy out your soul candy!"

"Last time you were here you bought enough candy for 10 shinigamis," Urahara said, his eyes gleaming "Why would you need more?"

"I don't think I'm supposed to tell you," Ruby said.

"Fair, fair, well, I suppose I could part with my stock if you could bring by some more of that crystallized reiatsu from your last visit. Fascinating stuff, would love to know how it's made," Urahara said. Really, calling it dust is underselling it; it rips through spirit particles like nothing Urahara had ever seen.

"Crystallized reiatsu?" Ruby asked.

"You know. That stuff in your ammunition?" Urahara said. She had to have known what she was dealing with if she made it, right?

"Oh that's just dust," Ruby explained. "And it's not made, it's mined."

Urahara blinked twice at that. Spiritual energy isn't suppose to crystallize naturally. He wasn't even sure it could crystallize unnaturally, not until he had a sample for himself. Urahara then remembered to return to his typical lazy smirk, "Well alright then. I have a couple dozen more of those candies I suppose I could part with. Now if you want to buy out my stock I'll need, oh, I dunno, half a kilogram of that dust stuff?"

Ruby placed 4 vials on the counter, pointing to each one in turn. "Air, fire, water, lightning"

Urahara blinked again. Not only is crystallized reiatsu mined, but it comes in varieties? Where was this girl picking up this stuff? The man regained his footing. "Ah, so you have a few more varieties of dust this time."

"Yep!" Ruby chirped.

"Say," Urahara continued. "How's Blake doing?" Urahara had managed to stick some trackers on her, but they had almost stopped responding after she had left. The little signal he was pulling off them seemed to be coming from every direction at once, while also coming from none of them.

"Blake?" Ruby asked. "She's fine, but she wants to file a complaint. Your candies didn't make her invisible, and photos of her flying made the news."

"Even if she was visible to a few people, cameras wouldn't have been able to pick that up." Urahara said.

"I don't know what kind of cameras you're using, but scrolls saw her just fine."

"Scrolls?" Urahara asked.

Ruby took out her phone and said, "You know, this thing."

"That's your phone," Urahara said.

"Don't be silly," Ruby replied. "It does other stuff, like connecting to the CCT, taking photos..."

Urahara blinked. He didn't know what the arrancar were doing, but his trackers would need a major upgrade to figure out where they could be doing it. Scrolls, crystallized reiatsu, spirits not being invisible, that all screamed Ruby coming from someplace Urahara never heard of. A realm beyond Soul Society, Hell, Earth, and Hueco Mundo, and Urahara wanted in.

VVVVVV

Ruby wasn't sure why her asleep-self told her awake-self to talk to this random doctor, but she trusted her own judgement.

Though when she got to Doctor Polendina's office, she did not expect to meet another red-head her age, this one in a green dress.

"Salutations!" the red-headed girl greeted Ruby.

"Um, hi?" Ruby replied.

"My name is Penny. It's a pleasure to meet you!"

"Hi Penny... I'm Ruby," Ruby replied.

Penny instantly replied, "It's a pleasure to meet you!"

"Um, you already said that?" Ruby replied.

Penny looked at Ruby before answering, "So I did!"

Alright then. Ruby wasn't sure what to say to that. "Well," Ruby said as she walked past the girl, "Take care friend."

As Ruby made her way to the man working in the corner, she noted dozens upon dozens of cages of rats in various stages of being alive, for certain definitions of the word, as well as her body sleeping peacefully on a couch in the corner. The place gave her a strong sense of deja vu.

"What did you call me?" Penny asked.

"I dunno what I ah, uh," Ruby started stuttering out, as Penny pushed forward.

"You called me friend! Am I really your friend?" Penny said, inches away from Ruby's face.

"Um... yeah sure?" Ruby said. "Why not?" There was something really off about the girl, and it went far beyond the fact that she shouldn't even be here in the first place.

"Sen-sational!" Penny replied. "We can paint our nails and try on clothes and talk about cute boys!"

"Uh..." Ruby said.

"Ah, I see you've met my daughter," Doctor Polendina finally turned around from his rat, which Ruby just noticed had a tiny little chain coming out of its tiny little chest. "And you're already hitting it off splendedly?"

"She called me friend!" Penny said.

"Sensational!" Doctor Polendina said, hugging his daughter. "Now you have someone to try on nails and paint your clothes with!"

"Father," Penny said simply.

"Hm?" Doctor Polendina raised his eyebrows.

"It's paint our nails and try on clothes," Penny said, "not try on nails and paint on clothes."

"Is that what I said?" Doctor Polendina asked.

"Yes father!" Penny cheered back

"And you knew the difference," Doctor Polendina replied, hugging her harder. "I'm so proud."

"Um," Ruby jutted in, "Doctor Polendina, you wanted something?"

"Ah yes, just a few quick scans while you're here." Doctor Polendina answered. "Penny, would you go prepare the MRI?"

Penny gave her father a salute, then headed off as the man took Ruby aside. Checking to make sure Penny was out of earshot, he then whispered, "Be a good friend to Penny, she doesn't have many friends."

Ah, that brought Ruby back. To when she first met Starrk and Lilynette, when they complained of the endless sands of Hueco Mundo and the lack of souls that could survive them. He gave the professor a thumbs up, she could do that for a lonely little girl.

VVVVVV

On the surface, everything in Atlas was calm. But just under the seams Altas was buzzing like a hive. And Doctor Polendina was at the center of it all.

As the inventor of the still-classified artificial soul, he was hand-selected by the Council of Atlas to work with the arrancar on research and development in regards to souls. When he heard that the Arrancar were ghosts more powerful than any hunter, he was skeptical. When he heard that Ruby Rose was both a human and an incredibly powerful ghost depending on which half of her was awake, he was skeptical. And when Ruby offered him a candy dispenser and said it would allow him to remove souls from their bodies, he was also skeptical.

And each time, his skepticism lost to the cold hard facts laid before him.

While he was no closer to discovering why souls did not persist in Remnant like in Hueco Mundo, the soul candy was a start. The little candy in his palm forced souls in Remnant to behave the way the arrancar told him souls were meant to behave, the way souls behave in Hueco Mundo.

He looked over Doctor Szayelaporro Granz's notes. The man was a monster, a genius, and most importantly, an inspiration. After all, it was his job to take Doctor Granz's notes, and use them to make sure Atlas could protect itself from the monstrously powerful shinigami. And it was there that the smarter and more sadistic Doctor Granz failed. Some days it felt as though the weight of the world rested on Doctor Polendina's shoulders.

Then Doctor Polendina reminded himself that he can't be everything for everyone. That he had to choose what was really important to him. And with that, he knew what to do.

Doctor Polendina pulled open his daughter's blueprints. And he got to work.

VVVVVV

A month after Ruby had first met Penny and a week into the Vytal Festival Tournament, Ruby was surprised to see Penny in the tournament finals. She was doing really well too!

Ruby wished her team was still in the tournament, but team FNKI was a bit too much for Weiss and Yang.

Although some of the stuff in the singles rounds made Ruby glad that Yang wasn't up there. One guy, Cardin, was disqualified for shattering the Haven finalist's elbow, even after his aura went down! It would take weeks for Mercury to heal enough to go back into the field! She couldn't figure why Cardin would do that, it was completely unnecessary!

Anyway, this round promised to be the best in the tournament. Penny had crushed her competition pretty much single handedly during every stage in the tournament, and Pyrrha was a 4-time tournament champion! And they were both her friends, so Ruby wasn't sure which of them she was supposed to root for.

Off of Penny's back flew eight blades attached to the girl by thin wires, which Penny flew through the air with insane skill, while Pyrrha showed some of the most amazing close-combat abilities Ruby had ever seen in deflecting them.

As the two girl began fighting , Pyrrha couldn't even touch the girl as Penny wielded each of her eight blades like they were extensions of her very body, Pyrrha went in time and time again, and each time, Penny rebuffed her without even moving.

Then something shifted. Penny's blades started missing their mark, while Pyrrha's lunges started hitting Penny. Penny was forced back, and revealed that she had added dust chambers to her swords, as she started firing rounds at the Pyrrha which the girl expertly deflected.

That was when Penny charged, riding her blades like a wave as she moved in to completely disarm Pyrrha. Pyrrha somehow called her blade back into her hands? Huh, Ruby thought, neat semblance. It was useless though as Penny shot the blade away before it could reach her. Then Penny levitated all eight her swords over her head.

With a pulse, Pyrrha tossed away Penny's blades, the wires they were connected to wrapping and squeezing themselves around Penny. But instead of blood coming out when the wires sliced into the girl, everyone in the stadium saw bits of machinery fall to the ground.

The stadium was shocked into silent horror, everyone, the commentators, the crowds, the combatants, all of them dumbstruck.

Then the loudspeakers started booming.

"This is not a tragedy," the speakers went. "This was not an accident. This is what happens when you hand over your trust, your safety, your children, to men who claim to be our guardians but are in reality nothing more than men. Our academies' headmasters wield more power than most armies, and one was audacious enough to... to..."

The reason the voice stalled was obvious to all. Because from within the scraps of machinery, Penny emerged.

VVVVVV

"What did Doctor Polendina do to you?" Ruby mouthed, as she looked into the stadium.

She wasn't quite sure what she was looking at. It both was Penny and it wasn't. It had Penny's dress, it had Penny's face, and it had eight swords like Penny.

But unlike Penny, it had a hole through its chest, Penny's face was but a mask it wore over a robotic skull, its limbs were obviously mechanical, and the wires by which the eight swords were attached to Penny's back linked directly to the girl's mechanical spinal column.

The machine looked around at the silent, dumbstruck crowd. And then, the machine said, "Why is everyone so quiet? The match isn't over, is it?" with a voice that could only belong on a 15 year old girl. She then looked over to the awestruck Pyrrha and said, "I'm still combat ready!"

And that was the moment Ruby knew without a doubt, whatever that robotic arrancar Doctor Polendina created was, at its core it was still Penny.

Ruby wasn't quite sure what was happening, but she knew one thing. She descorrered into the middle of the ring, and told Penny, "We have to leave."

"Hm? Why?" Penny asked. "Aren't I still fighting Pyrrha?"

"No," Ruby said, opening up another portal. "I don't know what this is, but it's bad."

"Then lead on, friend Ruby!"

The loudspeaker continued, without ever regaining its previous ironclad composure. "to... control both. ...They cling to this power in the name of peace, and yet, what do we have here? One nation's attempt at a synthetic army mercilessly torn apart by another's star pupil. What need would Atlas have for a soldier disguised as an innocent little girl?"

But by then, Ruby and Penny were already gone, leaving only the scraps of Penny's shell behind.

VVVVVV

Ruby took Penny back to her father's lab. Then the questions began.

"Penny, what happened? What was that? Why are you an arrancar? Are you okay? What was your dad even doing?"

"Did I make you worry?" Penny asked.

"Of course I'm worried, you died, and then you came back, but now you look scary, and I don't know why," Ruby said.

"Worry not Ruby! Father was nervous about the tournament, so he upgraded me!" Penny said.

"Upgraded?" Ruby asked.

"I saw what happened," Doctor Polendina inturrupted, coming out from the back of his laboratory. "Penny, are you okay?"

"All essential systems functioning at capacity, father," Penny said with a salute.

"Oh thank heavens," the man said, wrapping his monstrous robotic daughter soul-thing in a hug. "It worked. It worked!" the man said, patting Penny's back.

"What did you do?" Ruby asked.

"Well, no sense in hiding it now," the man said. "Penny is an artificial soul. And I was able to remove her soul from her body, turn it into an arrancar, and then put it back in her body. Speaking of which, what did you bring of her body?"

"Wuh?" Ruby stuttered.

"Sorry father, we left it behind," Penny replied.

"Well, no matter, the only thing in there I'd have trouble replacing is the soul candy," Doctor Polendina said. "The important thing is that you two are safe."

"Uh..." Ruby interrupted, "Isn't messing around with souls like that... kinda bad? Doesn't making people into arrancars... bother either of you?"

Penny blinked, before answering. "Don't be silly Ruby," Penny said. "This is father. I wouldn't be here if he didn't spend thousands of hours developing my soul."

"It's true," the doctor replied. "I must have been through every scrap of her code a dozen times both before and after I turned on the learning algorithms."

"Uh," Ruby said. "Okay, something about that bothers me, but I'm not sure what..."

"Don't worry, father makes everyone feel that way," Penny explained. "The feeling should go away eventually. Or at least you'll learn to stop asking, just like Mr. Ironwood!"

"Uh huh..." Ruby said, looking between both of them. "Listen, guys, the important thing here is something big is going on at the Vytal festival, and I don't really get what..."

"Maybe we should stay here until it all calms down?" Penny said.

"It sounded like that woman was trying to start a riot," the doctor said. "Probably best to wait it out here in Atlas."

"I dunno," Ruby said, taking out her scroll. She rang Yang up and said, "Listen, sis? I'm with Penny and-"

"Ruby, we need backup!" Yang replied. "We're under attack by Grimm! And the White Fang!"

"Oh, uh, I coming right away-" Ruby began.

"Bring those scary arrancar guys too!" Yang said.

"I thought you hated those guys?" Ruby asked. "Are you sure?"

"Listen Ruby," Yang said, as Ruby heard a crash through the phone. "Things are really bad over here. We need all the firepower we can get. All of it."

"On my way," Ruby said, hanging up. She then turned to both Polendinas. "Vale's under attack, Penny, you up for more fighting?"

Penny's girl-faced mask smirked. "I'm combat ready!"

The doctor looked downcast, as he added, "Well, this is what Penny was born to do." Giving his little monster another hug, Doctor Polendina said, "I order you to come back safely."

"Orders confirmed!" Penny replied as she returned her father's hug.

VVVVVV

Endless tides of Grimm converged on Beacon by both land and sky. The students were putting up the greatest fight that could be expected, but the problem was a simple matter of numbers; the Grimm were endless, and students were not.

What was worse, both the White Fang and the war machines of Altas were turned against the thin lines of hunters. It was a bizarre sight, machine, monster, and man all fighting their hardest to destroy Beacon academy.

This was the battleground Ruby and Penny found themselves. And in the center of it all was a great dragon circling overhead, from its pores dripped countless creatures of Grimm down upon the defending hunters.

The battle was lost before it began. At this point the only reason to stay was to allow the stragglers to retreat.

Then the dragon landed at the base of the CCT tower, and Penny said something crazy.

"I'm going to kill the dragon."

"What," Ruby said.

"The dragon is providing the Grimm endless forces. I'm going to kill it," Penny said.

"Got it," Ruby replied, ripping open a garganta for the two of them. In an instant, they were in the courtyard of the tower, surrounded by hundreds of beowulves. And while Ruby took them out, Penny flew at the dragon, literally flew, as if the air itself was solid, and stabbed into the beast with all eight of her blades.

The dragon writhed under Penny's blades, flying to the air to escape the little girl draining out its blood like a mosquito. The dragon barreled through the tower, knocking the top of it off and crushing a number of its fellow grimm below. Ruby ripped into the survivors with her scythe.

Then she received... a phone call? Who would be calling her during all of thise?

"Salutations friend Ruby!" The phone said.

"Penny?" Ruby asked. "What, why, aren't you busy with the dragon?"

"Hello, computer here, of course I can multi-task," Penny answered. "But that's not the point!" Penny said. "Pyrrha is one of your friends, right?"

"Um, yeah, why?"

"She is fighting against someone really good atop the tower. I think she could use your help."

"Who would be crazy enough to even be up there in all of this?" Ruby asked.

"Hold on a sec... need to cross check the face-ah!" Penny said. She then replied as if she had all the time in the world, "Cinder Fall, leader of team Crimson, C.M.S.N."

What. Why? Shouldn't she be helping kill the Grimm? Why on earth would she be fighting against Pyrrha instead? Questions Ruby would have to answer later. "I'm on it!" Ruby said, hanging up.

She created a portal to the roof of the building, and stepped out.

Before her lay Pyrrha, pierced through the heart by a cruel looking woman.

With a fit of her semblance, Ruby charged.

VVVVVV

Pyrrha was dead.

She gave it her best shot. But this... Cinder, the woman who stole the legendary powers of the Fall Maiden, who was behind everything that was happening today, was better than her. And when the woman shot her through the heart, Pyrrha knew she was done. Pyrrha's only regret is that she couldn't have taken down the cause of all of Vale's misery.

The last thing she would ever see is Ruby rushing to her side, and... popping something into her mouth?

And all of a sudden she felt a lot better! Except for the fact that Ruby had just thrown the two of them off the tower. "Wha-" Pyrrha started, as Ruby ripped open a grey portal in front of the two of them. They passed through, and all of a sudden Ruby was skidding them to a halt next to some old guy in a lab filled with rat cages.

"I'm so sorry Pyrrha, I came too late, I'm so, so sorry-" Ruby was blubbering.

Pyrrha was very confused.

"Um, actually, I'm fine," Pyrrha said.

"No, no you're not, you're dead because I was too late I'm so sorry!" Ruby continued frantically, desperately hugging Pyrrha.

"I... I don't feel very dead?" Pyrrha replied.

"Ruby, give the girl some space," the old man with the thick glasses said, pushing Ruby to the side. "I'm Doctor Polendina, Penny's father. I saw your fight today, and let me tell you, you gave me quite a scare! A magnetism semblance, what were the odds!"

"Um, I'm sorry for hurting your daughter?" Pyrrha said.

"That is quite alright, you couldn't have known," the doctor said, waving Pyrrha off. He then moved to clean his glasses. "Now, first thing first. Before you go back out there to fight more Grimm, you need to know that you are dead."

"Um... no," Pyrrha replied. "Ruby saved me."

"Well, I suppose your soul is still alive," Doctor Polendina replied simply. "But let me guess, Ruby popped a candy in your mouth and that put a chain in you chest?"

"I don't have a..." Pyrrha started as she looked down. She did have a chain through her chest.

"I'm really sorry, Pyrrha," Ruby said, looking down at the floor.

"But, I can't be dead. I'm right here," Pyrrha said. "Like, standing here."

"Bah," the doctor said, selecting a cage and grabbing a rat out of it. He then pulled a pez dispenser from his pocket. "Now look carefully," the man said. "This is soul candy. It ejects the soul by placing another inside." He said as he put a piece in the rat's mouth. And all of a sudden, he had two rats, the chain on the chest of the first leading to the second, which looked like it was trying to squeak language?

"Now see this soul rat? If we put it back into its body," the doctor said, pushing the rat with the chain into the other rat. "The candy comes out, and it lives its merry little life. But if we were to instead kill the rat's original body, and cut the chain..."

Pyrrha looked at the rat. Then she looked down at her chain. Her 100% broken chain. That didn't lead to anything.

"No," Pyrrha said. "It can't be. That's ridiculous."

"Don't worry my dear, denial is a natural part of the grieving process," Doctor Polendina said.

"I'm sorry, Pyrrha," Ruby added.

Pyrrha held Ruby's shoulder. She then said, "It's not your fault."

"But...!" Ruby began.

"Even if I were dead, which I'm not," she said with a glare to Doctor Polendina, "It would be my fault for going after Cinder. It would be Cinder's fault too. But I wouldn't be here if not for you, so, thank you."

And then Ruby cried into Pyrrha's arms.

VVVVVV

Harribel looked to her arrancar, and explained, "The situation is as follows - the White Fang are staging an assault on the Vytal festival, alongside hordes of the Grimm. I don't know why they selected this particular time to stage their assault, or how they timed it up with the revelation that Penny is an artificial arrancar. We will deal with those matters later. For now, the important thing is dealing with the Grimm."

"Now, you may be wondering why we're headed out to Vale in the middle of an enemy invasion," Harribel said to the half-dozen arrancar that happened to be both capable and interested in battle. Half of them were her own fraccions. She continued, "And the reasons are simple. Vale's existence is convenient, and the enemies forces are weak."

"Remember, the Remnans view us favorably, and we'll be surrounded by hordes of Grimm. There is no reason to kill the Remnans." She then looked Grimmjow directly in the eyes and continued, "Do not kill the Remnans. Not even accidentally. If you have to kill one Remnan to save a dozen, you are to let those dozen Remnans die. Let the White Fang and the hunters of Vale fight amongst each other."

She then directed her gaze back to the rest of the group. "Today we will go out there, we will feast upon armies of Grimm, and we will be heroes for it! They will recognize us as gods upon the battlefield! So prepare yourselves for glory!"

"Boss, it's just us," Grimmjow said. "You don't have to impress anyone here. Now come on, let's go kill some stuff."

Harribel glared at Grimmjow, but the man was unflappable. She didn't have time to play stupid power games with the man, so she opened a descorrer to Vale and simply said, "Get out there and kill some Grimm."

VVVVVV

Monsters in the streets, dragons in the air, robots rampaging. Grimmjow breathed it all in.

Today would be a good day.

Of course, Grimmjow knew what his first target would be. When there's a dragon rampaging about, you gotta have a dragonslayer. And that was one impressive dragon.

Grimmjow raced through the streets, bisecting any Grimm he came across as he went to the CCT tower. Didn't want anyone taking the kill before he could. And the closer he got to it, the more impressive the dragon became. The thing was as big as a mountain!

He leaped up the tower toward his prey, and did what he did best, started pummeling it in the skull. He had to give the dragon credit, sure it was painfully slow, but its skull could sure take a lot of hits. Hell, the dragon even ate his cero like it was nothing.

Well, nothing for it then. When the dragon tried to bite him, Grimmjow ran straight down its throat and fired a cero into the beast's brain.

Really, it was kind of disappointing. He was hoping he'd at least have to release or something. Still, Grimmjow the Dragonslayer had a nice ring to it.

As he exited the slain beast's slowly dissolving mouth, he noticed he wasn't alone up here.

"Yeah, I stole your kill," Grimmjow told the woman with the glowing eyes. "Maybe if you weren't so slow killing it you could have been the dragonslayer here."

"Careful!" Another arrancar shouted out. "She's really strong!"

"Who are you?" the woman demanded.

"Always a pleasure to be acquainted with two lovely ladies," the man said in his smoothest voice. "Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, part time dragon-slayer, full-time brawler, and all-time lady's man."

That was when the arrancar girl lunged at the hot lady, who took her hotness pretty literally when she threw a fireball into arrancar-girl's chest.

Grimmjow looked over the young arrancar. Kinda robotic. He didn't recognize the girl at all. "Now, now, remember, we're all supposed to be on the same side here. Remember Harribel's orders?"

"What does Harribel have to do with any of this?" arrancar-girl asked, knocking arrow after arrow out of the air with her swords. The newbie arrancar lunged at the woman, nearly eviserating her as the woman struck the newbie arrancar with lightning.

Let no one say Cinder was not good at thinking on her feet. With a glance between her and Grimmjow, she was already making her story. "She's one of Atlas's war machines!" Cinder grunted, "Help me take her down before she kills someone!"

Grimmjow ignored the hot lady in favor of the arrancar. "You know, Harribel's orders? Where she told us not to kill anyone?" Grimmjow asked. "Not my head if you ignore her."

"Grimmjow, I'm not one of your arrancars! It's me, Penny!" Penny shouted as she took cover from Cinder's lightning.

"Penny? Old guy's little girl?" Grimmjow asked. "You look awful. Who killed you?"

"Pyrrha!" Penny answered, firing the dust out of her blades into Cinder. "And Doctor Polendina. I'd love to tell you the details, but I am guessing this isn't the best time?"

The lady spoke up, directing her words to Grimmjow and her arrows to Penny. "This is one of Atlas's synthetic soldiers. She's been compromised during the White Fang invasion. I'm trying to put her down before she kills anyone. Are you going to help me or are you going to watch?"

"Hey!" Penny replied. "I'll have you know I am perfectly functional."

"You saw the Atlas machines," the lady said. "You know she's compromised."

Penny added, "She's just saying that because she saw how strong you were. She killed a fallen hunter right in front of me! And I can say with 95% confidence she was voicing that surprise broadcast during the Vytal festival."

Grimmjow thought about this predicament for a moment. Which of them was telling the truth, and which of them was lying...

Then he realized this stupid squabble is getting in the way of his Grimm mass slaughter.

"You know what? This is for wasting my time," Grimmjow said, letting out his release. This was a job for panther powers. He used sonido to get directly behind Cinder, and with a single swipe he broke her legs. Then he teleported behind Penny, ripped out the wires for her swords, and broke her legs as well. All of it in under a second.

"There, now neither of you can kill anyone," Grimmjow said, demonstrating his mastery of the King Solomon style of mediation.

"I suppose that does stop her from hurting more people..." Penny said with some disappointment, as if her legs being scrapped all over the top of the tower was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" the woman shouted through her gasps of pain.

"Hey, I was feeling generous today, normally I just kill people that annoy me," Grimmjow said casually. "Now you girls have fun!" Grimmjow told the pair.

He had more important things to do than mediate for two crazy broads, there was a slaughter to be had!


	8. Chapter 8

Penny crawled behind some of the various cogs that lay strewn atop the CCT tower, using them as cover in case Cinder started throwing more lightning around, as she and Cinder stared each other down.

Cinder, wincing in incredible pain, reached for her scroll. When she tried to open it, she found it cracked and useless.

Penny had already started a subroutine to call Mister Ironwood for help. She wanted to call Ruby, but with the CCT tower in pieces around her, the signal could never reach Atlas. In hindsight, had she thought of it, she might have come up with a plan for Ruby to pick her up before Ruby carried off Pyrrha.

"Cinder," Penny said, her face etched with concern but not a hint of pain, "Some of my friends are coming. I need you to promise not to hurt them."

"Are you serious?" Cinder gasped, glaring at the girl. The woman was ripping at her dress, and tying the scraps of cloth into makeshift bandages to slow the bleeding.

"You're injured! You might die if we don't get it treated!" Penny said.

"They'll just kill me anyway," Cinder said.

"Vale doesn't have the death penalty," Penny added.

"Doesn't matter. They need to kill me. I have what they want," Cinder replied, as if that somehow explained everything.

Penny looked Cinder over. She was bleeding pretty badly, and her legs bent in all the wrong ways. She said conversationally, as if her own injuries didn't bother her at all, "If we leave you here, it's fifty-fifty you bleed out in the next hour. And almost certain you never walk again. And that's assuming the Grimm don't get you."

"Screw you," Cinder said between ragged breaths. "I have overcome everything Vale had to throw at me, I will overcome this. I don't need your pity! So just shove your help up your ass!"

Cinder was in really bad shape, Penny suspected that in an hour Cinder's permission to send help would be a moot point. Still, as much as the woman may have been trying to kill herself, it wouldn't be right to leave her here to die. "Someone is coming," Penny said. "And you are entering shock. Either let them pick us up, or you will die."

Cinder glared at Penny between her heavy breaths, before finally deciding, "...Fine. I won't kill them."

"Sen-sational!" Penny replied, as Cinder inwardly cursed the machine's sunny smile.

VVVVVV

General Ironwood was having a really bad day. Definitely in the top ten worst days of his career.

He was hoping for a nice peaceful tournament match that would demonstrate the capabilities of project P.E.N.N.Y.

Instead he discovered that Doctor Polendina killed P.E.N.N.Y. in the most literal possible way, he had to deal with an invasion force that included his own robotic defenses being used against him, and now he had to coordinate a full retreat from Beacon Academy as it was being overrun by Grimm.

So when he picked up the phone, he knew it was not going to be plesant.

"Salutations Mister Ironwood! Could you send a bullhead to the top of the CCT?" Penny's chipper voice asked.

"Why," Ironwood said. What is Penny even doing out here? What was Ruby thinking, sending her into the middle of this?

"Cinder Fall, she murdered a huntswoman and I'm pretty sure she narrated the invasion broadcast, is injured really badly up here with me. Now we're both stuck up here."

Ironwood could already feel a headache coming on. "That is going to be difficult. The place is swarming with avian grimm, and there is a dragon holding the place down."

"Oh don't worry," Penny said, "The dragon was taken care of. Las Noches sent their men out."

"That..." Ironwood said, looking for words as he shot his 16th beowulf of the day, "That is the first piece of good news I've heard all day."

"So can you send a bullhead?" Penny asked.

"Every hospital in the city is packed," Ironwood said. "All emergency services are tied up." Or at least too tied up to pick up a mass murderer.

Penny paused, which Ironwood knew meant she was running through one of her conversation modeling algorithms. Which meant she was about to say something to change his mind, Ironwood internally groaned.

Penny finally said, "Wouldn't it look really good if Atlas captures the woman responsible for the invasion? We could use her to show that we didn't send our robots against Vale. But if she's dead, no one will believe she wasn't just a scapegoat."

Ironwood knew it. Penny always knew exactly what to say when she put her algorithms to it. "...I'll send a bullhead."

"Sen-sational!" Penny replied. Sometimes, Ironwood felt like he was spoiling the girl.

VVVVVV

Harribel looked at the crowd of cheering people. While she knew that this is what she wanted, to make the arrancar from an unknown faction to a known faction, there were more people in front of her now than in all of Hueco Mundo. A lesser arrancar might be intimidated.

"Two nights ago Vale was attacked on all sides. By terrorists, by the Grimm, and by its own machines. Beacon was nearly lost, and with it, I feared Vale would be gone as well. All because of your inability to combat the Grimm."

"Make no mistake, your hunters are supremely trained for their tasks. But the Grimm have shown their true strength that night when they called down a mountainous dragon upon your towers. No one hunter can be expected to take down such a beast."

"But the soldiers of Hueco Mundo can. Grimmjow the dragonslayer can. And I can. For that is the strength of Hueco Mundo!"

"We will harness power that transcends life and death, and feast on the hordes posed against this world. We will force the Grimm to bow their heads to us, and if they do not? We will crush their skulls beneath our heels as we devour their comrades before them! We shall make them our prey, and they shall know fear, and they shall hide from us, or they shall be consumed by us. For that is our way!"

"Now who among you will join us!" Harribel shouted into the crowd, finishing her speech at it's climax to the cheers of the hundreds invited to this press conference.

And although Harribel steeled her eyes, she allowed herself a smile behind her high collar.

VVVVVV

Epilogue

VVVVVV

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Pyrrha asked Dr. Polendina.

"It's either do it now in a controlled environment, or have you rampage in an uncontrolled environment later," Dr. Polendina replied, bolt cutters in hand. "Ruby, get ready."

"Right," Ruby said with a nod.

Polendina looked at Pyrrha and explained, "As discussed, this is going to hurt a lot. I do not have a painkiller that works on souls and hollows. Are you still ready for that?" Pyrrha nodded. "Bite on this," Doctor Polendina said, handing Pyrrha a mouth guard. He then took the bolt cutters, and snipped into the last chain link on Pyrrha's chest.

Pyrrha groaned in pain, and the doctor quickly snipped the other half of the chain link, dropping the chain to the floor.

Then, he ran for the door with Ruby, as Pyrrha and her cries of pain dissipated into the room.

"She should reform as a hollow in the next 10 to 20 seconds!" the doctor shouted. "Don't worry, I painted the room in dust to keep her from escaping, just, hold her down!"

"Got it!" Ruby said, entering her ressureccion moments before they heard howling start coming out of the room. Ruby rushed in first, pinning the minotaur that her friend had become in a full-nelson with all here werewolf strength as the doctor brought in his electric bonesaw and his cauterizing burn dust solution.

But the moment he brought the bonesaw to Pyrrha's face, the hollow wailed out in a feral fury, and the saw was telekinetically hurled from the doctor's hands.

"Her semblance!" the doctor shouted, ducking his head as the circular saw swirled around the room. "It must have carried over! Ruby, I need you to rip off her mask by hand!"

Ruby was thrown off of Pyrrha, who was now staring Dr. Polendina down as the doctor slowly backed away. As the minotaur lunged at the doctor, Ruby sonido'd in front of it, grabbed Pyrrha's mask in both claws, and pulled as hard as she could through the minotaur's slashes, until she was able to rip off the whole thing.

"Ruby?" Pyrrha said.

"Pyrrha!" Ruby gladly replied.

"Out of the way, I need to finish the procedure." Doctor Polendina said, painting his caustic flamedust solution to the ripped edges of the already-reforming mask before it could heal, while Pyrrha winced. Once he was finished, only the horns of the mask remained as Pyrrha shredded her hollow traits. Literally shredded, there were huge clumps of hair falling off of her and dissolving on the floor. Once the hair cleared itself, all that was left was a simple spear and some mask fragments.

Gasping for breath, Polendina shouted "Success!" before collapsing into the nearest chair.

"Mirror?" Pyrrha asked, to which Ruby offered Pyrrha her scroll.

Pyrrha... looked pretty normal, except for boney horns. Although the hollow hole spot was weird.

"Huh, weird place for a hollow hole. Why the heel?" Ruby asked.

"When I was fighting Cinder, I was shot there," Pyrrha explained. "She shot me in the heart right after."

"Huh," Polendina huffed. "I'll have to look into whether odd hollow hole locations indicate previous wounds," Polendina said between huge breaths of air. "Most arrancar don't remember their past lives well enough to verify, for various reasons," he continued between ragged breaths. "You'll want the spear, it's for your release."

"Release?" Pyrrha asked.

"Oh yeah, now you get magic transfomation powers," Ruby said. "You know, like that show with the high school girls using magic, except instead of changing clothes, the transformation changes your skin."

"4 out of 5 human arrancar has a ressureccion, according to the notes I got from Doctor Granz," Doctor Polendina added. "The fifth will have never left their ressureccion in the first place."

"So it's like Ruby's werewolf thing," Pyrrha said.

"Exactly!" Ruby replied.

The 3 spent the rest of the afternoon going over the details of arrancar daily life, Grimm eating, and checking out Pyrrha's ability to transform into a seven-foot-tall minotaur person.

VVVVVV

Author's Note: Yeah, I might write more later, maybe I'll clean this up but I'm going to leave this for now. It was a pleasure writing for you all!


End file.
